Cost of DVD as data storage versus HDD (UK)

[Andy Ball]

hp> Mine is Cyrix MII 300 also called a Cyrix 6x86MX(tm)

Cyrix MII 300 runs at 233MHz (the 66 x 3.5 version)
I need to write this down here cos I keep forgetting!!

Nice little chip that, I ran one for years. I ran mine at
225 MHz though, 3x 75 MHz. 'P' ratings are bunk. Those
machines that I used the chip in were clearly marked 225 MHz
and if it happened to out-perform an Intel chip at the same
clock speed, so much the better.

- Andy Ball

 

[Andy Ball]

guv> You are talking about "true" backing up of data

files?

Yes.

guv> Whilst I agree tape is a decent medium for that

purpose, it has many flaws as well. It will enable
you to restore files, granted (or even a full HD
backup if thats what you did), but not in realtime.
Its just too slow and linear for my liking

It works for me. Bear in mind that the files live on hard
disks, and are accessed from there. Aside from testing,
restore operations are few and far between. Although tape may
be slow when compared with something like DVD-RAM, the extra
capacity of most tape drives makes unattended backups
practical and that increases the likelihood of those backups
being done. Similarly, I don't have to grep through multiple
disks looking for the folder that contained the data. Tape
drives are standard equipment on most file servers that I
work on.

- Andy Ball.

 

[guv]

However such factors are not relevant as the drive speeds are basically the
same
and I would imagine electronic factors, bus speeds, are much faster than
mechanical ones such as data transfer rates to a hard drive.

It has every relevance. What size cache does your current drive have?
What are its access times? Things have improved greatly and whilst the
HD may be considered a bottleneck, the speed will be significantly
faster. Besides, 7200 werent even around 7 years ago!

Fair point as the drives are not yet 50 years old, you can make estimates
of course which may be wrong, but the manufacture would be in deep
shit 50 years down the line when all the company directors are dead, and
liable to prosecution :OP

They give a warranty. Once that period has expired, you are on your
own.

Reply in 100 years time.
It worked well for 6-7 years so what mechanism would cause it to fail now?
It is a sealed tin can, and food sealed in tin cans has been edible 50-100
years
down the line.
Thats my reasoning.

What strange logic you have. So if something works OK on day one, you
think it should therefore work in 100 years time? Besides, food would
definately degenterate, so there are no similarities. Why do you think
it has a sell by date?

That may well be true, maybe then I should stick to hard drives, which
have been considerably more 'lucky' for me?
A fair assumption?

I won the lottery once. Does that mean I will win it again?

Not really but there are no holes in my HDD apart from the obvious one.

But if you mistreated it like you have your cds and put holes in it
that werent meant to be there, it wouldnt work.

What is that?

Another DVD media format, in which discs are enclosed in caddys. Ie
you dont touch the surface.

I dont think so I can only eject the disk via using the software which
burns the disk, which asks me if I want to close the disk, I have not
done this.

When you burn, are you chosing multi-session? If you are, are you
making sure to leave further burning open. (ie close Session NOT CLSOE
DISC) - opening the cd drive has nothing to do with this.

However I can also eject by rebooting, but this would not 'close' the
disk (an active process) and I may have done this but i dont think
I did and i am sure I have probably rebooted other disks and written
to them again.

You are either fooling with me here, or you have serious knowledge
deficiences. I would suggest you look at the options available in the
software you use and look up "close session" and "multi-session".

This "cannot write to disk" has become a fairly common problem lately.

See above.

Well if I live 100 years I think I will need a touch more than
5 gig drive space to store all my downloads :O)

Buy a DVD burner then!!!

 

[guv]

guv> You are talking about "true" backing up of data

Yes.

guv> Whilst I agree tape is a decent medium for that

It works for me. Bear in mind that the files live on hard
disks, and are accessed from there. Aside from testing,
restore operations are few and far between. Although tape may
be slow when compared with something like DVD-RAM, the extra
capacity of most tape drives makes unattended backups
practical and that increases the likelihood of those backups
being done. Similarly, I don't have to grep through multiple
disks looking for the folder that contained the data. Tape
drives are standard equipment on most file servers that I
work on.

No argument on the value of methods you are using. Personally if I had
to back up an a daily/weekly basis, I would likely use tape. But here,
generally the talk is STORAGE.

 

[J. Clarke]

No argument on the value of methods you are using. Personally if I had
to back up an a daily/weekly basis, I would likely use tape. But here,
generally the talk is STORAGE.

Uh, tape _is_ storage. At one time it was pretty much the only high-volume
storage--look up "TOS" in the history of IBM mainframes. Disk is
random-access online storage normally. Tape is sequential-access and is
usually near-line or offline storage on contemporary systems, but it's
still storage.

 

[Simon Finnigan]

However such factors are not relevant as the drive speeds are
basically the same
and I would imagine electronic factors, bus speeds, are much faster
than mechanical ones such as data transfer rates to a hard drive.

You`re kidding right? How fast does your drive read/write data? A quick
check on nero shows that each of my drives hits 40 megs a second, and I`d be
surprised if your 7 year old drive can hit 10 megs a second. Technology has
moved on a huge way since you bought your drive!

Fair point as the drives are not yet 50 years old, you can make
estimates of course which may be wrong, but the manufacture would be
in deep
shit 50 years down the line when all the company directors are dead,
and liable to prosecution :OP

Do you understand statistics at all? If not I suggest you read up on them.
The lifetime of pretty much every component can be described as a "bell"
shape. Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

Reply in 100 years time.
It worked well for 6-7 years so what mechanism would cause it to fail
now? It is a sealed tin can, and food sealed in tin cans has been
edible 50-100 years
down the line.
Thats my reasoning.

Bearings for one. You`ve got a platter spinning at over 5000 rpm, stopping
and starting if you turn your computer off. Do you know one of the biggest
problems involved in making a nuclear weapon? Making the centrifuges
reliable enough to purify the fissile material. Hard-drives can and do
fail.

That may well be true, maybe then I should stick to hard drives, which
have been considerably more 'lucky' for me?
A fair assumption?

NEVER work on luck - read some statistics information. Just because you`ve
been lucky so far means absolutley nothing for the future.

 

[half_pint]

You`re kidding right? How fast does your drive read/write data? A quick
check on nero shows that each of my drives hits 40 megs a second, and I`d be
surprised if your 7 year old drive can hit 10 megs a second. Technology has
moved on a huge way since you bought your drive!

Your drive spins at either 5400 or 7200, the *same* as mine.

Do you understand statistics at all? yes
If not I suggest you read up on them.
The lifetime of pretty much every component can be described as a "bell"
shape.
REally?
Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Bearings for one. You`ve got a platter spinning at over 5000 rpm, stopping
and starting if you turn your computer off. Do you know one of the biggest
problems involved in making a nuclear weapon? Making the centrifuges
reliable enough to purify the fissile material. Hard-drives can and do
fail.

Sealed bearings

NEVER work on luck - read some statistics information. Just because you`ve
been lucky so far means absolutley nothing for the future.

Well my CDs keep failing and my hardrive keeps working,
I will stick with the lucky hard drives and my rabbits foot.

 

[Simon Finnigan]

Your drive spins at either 5400 or 7200, the *same* as mine.

Ok, so my drive spins at 7200 rpm, the same as yours. How big are your
platters? Lets be VERY generous, and say the full 5 gig capacity of your
drive is on a single platter. My smallest drive is 180 gigs - lets say
there are 3 platters there. My platters therefore hold 60 gigs each,
despite being the same physical size as your platters. Therefore the data
density on my platters is 12 times greater than on yours.

Therefore, for each revolution of the platter, my drive can read 12 times
more data. That`s 12 times the amount of data in the same amount of time,
making the data transfer rate 12 times greater.

Is that simple enough for you, or is it still too complicated for you to
understand?

REally?

Yes, I suggest you read pretty much any basic statistics book.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

Sealed bearings

So sealing the bearings means they last for an infinite length of time does
it? Do you often turn your computers off? If so then sooner or later the
drives WILL die. They`ll last longer if your computer is on 24/7, but NO
mechanical device can EVER last for eternity.

Or perhaps you mean they use sealed bearings in the centrifuges to produce
sufficiently enriched nuclear material? They may well do, but that is NOT
the biggest problem. The big problem is the extremely high rotational
speed, requiring incredibly well specified and engineered parts to keep the
centrifuge balanced.

Well my CDs keep failing and my hardrive keeps working,
I will stick with the lucky hard drives and my rabbits foot.

If your data is so unimportant to you, I wish you the very best of luck.
You will need it. Can I just ask that you let us all know how badly it goes
wrong when you do lose all your data though please.

 

[guv]

Your drive spins at either 5400 or 7200, the *same* as mine.

As has already been said *your* drive does *not* spin at 7200rpm.

Why not offer the info on the drive make and model, and we can
demonstrate with hard facts your assumptions on speed of throughput,
read and write are incorrect.

I would wager that even 4000rpm laptop drives far out perform your 7
year old 3 gig drive.

When I first started playing with analogue Video capture about 6 years
ago, only SCSI drives were capable of substained write capabilities
needed of about 7Mbps. Now, *every* IDE drive on the market can
*easily* cope with that and pass the figure needed probabily in excess
of 8 times what is needed.

Something that should be pretty obvious, the fact that technology
continues to improve in leaps and bounds. Something, everyone readily
accepts as a fact and easily provable with stats on the net. I can
only assume you are playing games if you cant see this to be the case
and are acting as a troll.

 

[lysander]

half_pint wrote:

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

I've no qualifications in statistics at all but I, along with
thousands of other students of electronics, had the words 'bathtub
curve' drilled into me all the way through college.

 

[Tim Auton]

half_pint wrote: [snip]

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

You're an idiot if you think qualifications in statistics qualify you
to define the failure curve of electro-mechanical devices (apparently
without data or any understanding of engineering). Odds-on
electro-mechanical devices will fail within the first few months
(manufacturing defects) or after a relatively long period of time (a
few years, when stuff wears out). In simple terms, if it lasts six
months there is a very good chance it will last three years.

For an offensive ****wit like you to understand: there are TWO common
failure modes, manufacturing defects and wear/degredation. One happens
early in the lifetime, one happens late. Hence the bathtub curve.

You don't need fancy statistics to work it out, a simple plot of
failures vs time for a sufficient sample size will suffice - this has
been performed innumerable times for innumerable components. There is
more than enough data to prove you an arrogant, ill informed ****wit
time and again.


Tim

 

[guv]

half_pint wrote: [snip]

Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

You're an idiot if you think qualifications in statistics qualify you
to define the failure curve of electro-mechanical devices (apparently
without data or any understanding of engineering). Odds-on
electro-mechanical devices will fail within the first few months
(manufacturing defects) or after a relatively long period of time (a
few years, when stuff wears out). In simple terms, if it lasts six
months there is a very good chance it will last three years.

Not that your reply was in my direction - but the orignial point was
the belief this continually used 3gig drive would last 100 years.

Using stats or mechanics as your argument, the chances of that
happening are Zero. Or do you suggest otherwise?

 

[Simon Finnigan]

I've no qualifications in statistics at all but I, along with
thousands of other students of electronics, had the words 'bathtub
curve' drilled into me all the way through college.

I`ve NEVER heard of it being described as a bathtub shape. How long ago was
your education, out of interest? What type of statistics would you use to
describe the failure rates? Everytime I`ve ever seen the relevant type of
stats being used, it`s always been a bell shape. Adjusting the parameters
could just about come up with a very weird bath-tub shape, but it`s
certainly nothing like a bath-tub as I know it Pretty much all the time
I`ve ever seen it used, it`s given a nice bell shape. Sometimes short and
fat, sometimes tall and thin, but always a recognisable bell. ~66% withing
1SD of the average failure time, ~66% of the remained between 1 and 2 SD of
the average and so on. This inevitably leads to a nice bell shape -
exponential decay and all that.

 

[half_pint]

I've no qualifications in statistics at all but I, along with
thousands of other students of electronics, had the words 'bathtub
curve' drilled into me all the way through college.

Thank you for that, I would say the only bathtub Finnegan ever saws in his
life is the one he bathes in, mind you I doubt he has had a bath or shower
in several decades.

 

[Simon Finnigan]

half_pint wrote: [snip]

Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself
more qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see
if half_wit has any clue at all about this.

You're an idiot if you think qualifications in statistics qualify you
to define the failure curve of electro-mechanical devices (apparently
without data or any understanding of engineering). Odds-on
electro-mechanical devices will fail within the first few months
(manufacturing defects) or after a relatively long period of time (a
few years, when stuff wears out). In simple terms, if it lasts six
months there is a very good chance it will last three years.

And the odds that it will survive for 100 years, as half_wit thinks are what
exactly then? I asked half_wit to give his reasoning behind his thought
processes (that`s assuming he is capable of rational thought, something that
is in great doubt in a number of newsgroups), explaining why he felt capable
of understanding the reasons behind the lifetime curves when he`s hardly
capable of having a single sensible thought in his head.

I`d accuse you of being half_wit posting under another name, but despite
your insulting posting method you are at least vaguely intelligent, more
than half-wit certainly. I don`t think you understand the full picture
here, but at least you seem to understand some of the basic ideas.

For an offensive ****wit like you to understand: there are TWO common
failure modes, manufacturing defects and wear/degredation. One happens
early in the lifetime, one happens late. Hence the bathtub curve.

Hmmm. So you think that a spike early after use starts, followed by a
period with no failure, and then another spike as things fail, will produce
a bath-tub shaped lifetime chart? Obviously it depends on the average
lifetime of the component and the standard deviation of the lifetime, but
the most you`re likely to get is a wide bell shape.

You don't need fancy statistics to work it out, a simple plot of
failures vs time for a sufficient sample size will suffice - this has
been performed innumerable times for innumerable components. There is
more than enough data to prove you an arrogant, ill informed ****wit
time and again.

Ahhh bless, the poor little baby throwing his rattle out his pram. Here`s a
question for you, you seem to think that stats are utterly irrelevant in
this case - if so then why do manufacturers bother to collect the stats on
the lifetime of their components? How did the whole (Fujitsu IIRC)
hard-drive faiure fiasco get detected? How about the IBM Deathstar drive
cock-up? People looked at the failure rates of these drives and realised
they where very unusual, and investigated further.

Perhaps if you want an intelligent conversation, you should avoid the
insults. It doesn`t make you look clever you know, certainly when you don`t
give a well considered, intelligent rebuttal to the arguement that`s upset
you so much.

 

[half_pint]

half_pint wrote: [snip]

Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

You're an idiot if you think qualifications in statistics qualify you
to define the failure curve of electro-mechanical devices (apparently
without data or any understanding of engineering). Odds-on
electro-mechanical devices will fail within the first few months
(manufacturing defects) or after a relatively long period of time (a
few years, when stuff wears out). In simple terms, if it lasts six
months there is a very good chance it will last three years.

For an offensive ****wit like you to understand: there are TWO common
failure modes, manufacturing defects and wear/degredation. One happens
early in the lifetime, one happens late. Hence the bathtub curve.

You don't need fancy statistics to work it out, a simple plot of
failures vs time for a sufficient sample size will suffice - this has
been performed innumerable times for innumerable components. There is
more than enough data to prove you an arrogant, ill informed ****wit
time and again.

I think he 'over trolled' himself there, such blatently obvious trolling
will earn
him no stars on the trolls hall of fame.

 

[Tim Auton]

half_pint wrote: [snip]
Few failures initially, reaching a maximum and then falling back to
zero once all have failed.

No its bath shaped you troll.

Ahhhh, I`d presume from your statement that you consider yourself more
qualified than me in the field of statistics. Please cite your
qualifications, and name the type of statistics used to describe the
lifetimes of components. No hints from anyoen else please, lets see if
half_wit has any clue at all about this.

You're an idiot if you think qualifications in statistics qualify you
to define the failure curve of electro-mechanical devices (apparently
without data or any understanding of engineering). Odds-on
electro-mechanical devices will fail within the first few months
(manufacturing defects) or after a relatively long period of time (a
few years, when stuff wears out). In simple terms, if it lasts six
months there is a very good chance it will last three years.

Not that your reply was in my direction - but the orignial point was
the belief this continually used 3gig drive would last 100 years.

Using stats or mechanics as your argument, the chances of that
happening are Zero. Or do you suggest otherwise?

That I can't argue with. I believe I've been corrected on the meaning
of MTBF on this group before.

Do you expect me to read the whole thread? I thought I was doing
rather well going back and reading a couple of posts ;o)

My apologies to all (especially the "idiot") if the comments I made
were out of context, but in the immediate context I stand by my
position. It's a bathtub curve. I guess the rest of you are talking
about the second peak (which probably does have a form adequately
described by some common statistical method) and yes, beyond the
second peak of the bathtub curve there is a fall to zero as the number
of functional units approaches zero. There is a finite lifetime which
doesn't have a mean of 100 years.


Tim

 

[Tim Auton]

Perhaps if you want an intelligent conversation, you should avoid the
insults. It doesn`t make you look clever you know, certainly when you don`t
give a well considered, intelligent rebuttal to the arguement that`s upset
you so much.

Note to self #1: Read entire thread before posting.

Note to self #2: Don't post drunk.

Note to self #3: Remember #2.


Tim

 

[Tim Auton]

I think he 'over trolled' himself there, such blatently obvious trolling
will earn
him no stars on the trolls hall of fame.

Note to self #1: Read entire thread before posting.

Note to self #2: Don't post drunk.

Note to self #3: Remember #2.


Tim

 

[half_pint]

As has already been said *your* drive does *not* spin at 7200rpm.

Not what I said "Your drive spins at either 5400 or 7200, the *same* as
mine"

Miine spins at 5400 (5401 I think), which statisfies the the 5400 or 7200
clause.

Why not offer the info on the drive make and model, and we can
demonstrate with hard facts your assumptions on speed of throughput,
read and write are incorrect.

I would wager that even 4000rpm laptop drives far out perform your 7
year old 3 gig drive.

When I first started playing with analogue Video capture about 6 years
ago, only SCSI drives were capable of substained write capabilities
needed of about 7Mbps. Now, *every* IDE drive on the market can
*easily* cope with that and pass the figure needed probabily in excess
of 8 times what is needed.

Something that should be pretty obvious, the fact that technology
continues to improve in leaps and bounds. Something, everyone readily
accepts as a fact and easily provable with stats on the net. I can
only assume you are playing games if you cant see this to be the case
and are acting as a troll.

However what you fail to realise is that data just behind the read head
requires one revolution for it to be read (unless it has multipule read
heads).
So my 5400 is only about 33% slower than a 'modern' 7200 drive.

A fact which even the most persistant of trolls cannot deny.