Well from the look of things Mike your time might be better off going and
hunting for general PC questions sites or something as those are quite
broad sweeping areas to plumb for knowledge in! But I shall try a quick
infodump.
CDs are your friend, if they work right. Dunno.. people just dont seem to
be formulating them right. But in any case, those little shiny discs hold
more than all but the brand spanking new 750mb Zips, can be written to
many times (for small increments on a CDR) or overwritten and erased
entirely (CDRW), plus even the slowest modern ones are quicker than any
zip drive, almost as reliable (zip's ARE NOT bombproof at all!), and
certainly cheaper for initial purchase and in terms of data transfer. All
of the bus worries and win95 compatibility issues, etc, should be long
ironed out by now -
e.g. once I figured out a certain option/driver that needed
setting and installing with my first CDRW, back in about 1999, it went
like silk after that. Even as a 6x write, 4x rewrite, 24x rewrite
drive it soundly whipped our old Zip100, and it wasn't long before any
residual contents of our 10 discs found themselves transferred to a couple
of CDRs and archived.
The zip then went on to found the operating system
of a hard-disc less 486, and later proved useful in transferring files..
slowly and unreliably, as they had 250 drives.. from the uni network. but
they have CDRWs now as well so it sits unused and unloved.
The one problem you may find, if you use 4x rewritables (instead of 10x),
is that blanking them and adding the files may take a long time if you
only want to transfer about half a zip's worth of data or so, because of
leadin/leadout burn-time overheads and the like. This can also be
sidestepped with use of "packet write" discs that, after a half hour or
so's formatting, can be used just like a floppy or Zip. For various
reasons I've never much used this (i'm patient enough to wait 60 seconds
for the blankspaces to write, but not 30 minutes for a packet writer to
format ;) but it was super handy when i did.
Also even if you don't use CDRW, CDRs can be multiple times written to,
in two different ways. For one, they also support packet write - but you
can't "erase" stuff obviously.. you can only alter the file system so it
no longer appears, and that space is forever lost. Another is
"multisession mode" which is a bit similar, but older and closer to the
classical CD writing method of "build the CD's virtual file system from
your hard disc and press burn". You burn some files to it, and leave it
"open", then later you can come back, add more files, replace others,
"erase" a few... until the disc is full.
This would, for now, be my preferred backup method, at least until DVD
drives become truly affordable and standardised. Go for as cheap as you
like, just check it has at least 12x CDR write (16x for preference -
anything higher is generally unreliable, but it still dispatches a 650mb
disc in a little under 5 minutes.. leaves Zip standing) and 8x CDRW
re/write (10x better), read speed... well, faster is better, so long as
it can be clocked down. If reliability is a must over speed then go for a
slower read, as some drives can't be slowed down easily. BUT whatever you
go for - BurnProof, JustLink, some other "buffer under-run protection"
mechanism such as that is ESSENTIAL. Any drive without it is living in
the dark ages, and will foul up any disc you're writing if there's a data
'blip' for some reason.. that old 6x didn't have it, and until I got a
chip faster than 233mhz I couldn't write 6x without closing down every
other program. (when i had a 166, no faster than 4x..).. I didn't catch
what mhz your thinkpad is, but I wouldn't like to try burning without the
protection above 8x on *any* computer.
No matter your operating system, 95 and up (98 for preference), linux,
whatever, it should work straight away. Most CD writers conform to a
certain set of "MPC" standards that mean there's generic commands for each
function and no special drivers are needed. Slot in & go.
Finally, you don't have to splash out on expensive discs, but generally
the second or third cheapest you find will do you just fine ;) There'll
be some bad experiences, but hey.. thats life i suppose 9_9.. like I said,
Zip drives go bad too, or rather the discs. Got at least 4 out of that old
10 which are now "emergency use only" as they've worn out so badly.
Difference is with CDs the replacement cost is about 20x lower now..
Flash cards, now, they're a totally different kettle of fish, originally
designed for digital cameras and other portable uses like that, and very
good they are too for that app; other areas maybe not so. Think of
them as just a RAM chip in a little plastic case, but a special kind that
doesn't need a power source to keep the data held in a solid state until
you next need to read it (they do, over a long time, lose the data??). Not
the quickest media in the world, maybe about the same speed as a 4-8x CDR
drive for some types, possibly as much as 16x for new ones like xD picture
cards. Very small, but also not yet that capacious unless you're willing
to spend loads of money. Need a special reader if you want to share the
data with anyone, and those are far less common than CD drives (eg, if i
wished to read a flashcard on my PC.. it would have to be a Smart Media
only, 256mb or less, and would work by a clunky method of being connected
thru my USB digital camera..).
Plus, they don't last forever.. after a certain number of writes (1,000?
10,000?) and even a certain number of reads (generally 10x higher) the
holding ability fades away. Possibly they have zillions of little moving
parts that wear out, i don't know. Not particularly easy to break (well,
if it's a CompactFlash.. smartmedia/xD look flimsy but seem tough enough)
but they are small, easy to lose, easy to drop on a chair then sit on..
especially the thumbnail-size xD!
If you're willing to pay the price for the capacity (currently they're
still about the same cost-per-megabyte as floppy discs, ie incredibly
disproportionate compared to CDR or even Zip; higher still if you use
an integrated "pen drive" type that connects directly to a USB socket),
put up with the low speed (but - instant access) and possibly limited life
and compatibility problems, then they're not a bad way to go. They are the
media of the future after all, once the price drops, capacity and working
life increases, and more and more PCs are supplied with readers/"flash
drives" or even just front-mounted USB... discs will slowly fade out and
we'll all be using little chip-cartridges just as Atari and all those
early 80s sci-fi films meant us to :D You could be an early adopter!
Personally I'm not even going to drop my floppy drive until I can use
flashcards that easily. Even a packet write CD seems a bit overkill if all
i'm transferring is a couple of 50kb word documents; with a floppy drive I
can just slot in the disc, right-click & "send to A:", and about five to
ten seconds of disc spin later it's done. CD and Zip would still be
initialising the drive (too much waiting-per-kilobyte :D).. flash is
almost as quick but just too expensive.
-mp
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Received on Sat May 31 09:49:53 2003
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