> Note that I am more interested in using said drive and discs > for storing massive amounts of data than in making multiple > bootleg copies of the extended edition of LotR, if that makes > any difference . . . ;-) > -- Ronn! :)
Here are a couple of links about the difference between DVD+R and DVD-R.... http://tinyurl.com/2g469 http://tinyurl.com/5rrr8 After using DVD burners at work and recently at home, I would offer these suggestions: 1. The dual layer, double sided format technology for home burners is so new that a recent Cnet review said that fully 50% of the double sided DVD's are not readable by other DVD drives and DVD players. I can look for that again if anyone is interested. 2. When I choose a DVD burner for home, I sacrificed the speed of a 16x burner with 2MB of cache, for a 12x burner with 8MB of cache. I opted for the data integrity during the burn instead of the speed. 3. Despite the additional cost, absolutely use popular name brand DVD's and not the cheapest that you can find. You will make fewer "coasters" and I have found that long term data integrity is better. After all, if you can't read the disc a year later, what was the point? 4. Even though everything I have read says that the quality of +R and -R should be the same, I have seen far fewer problems with the name brand +R formats, for both burnability and data integrity. I can't remember if I mentioned this on Brin-L or not, but here is my recent and painfully true backup story... I have a hard drive that is 4+ years old and has ran continuously since day one. I had been keeping my digital camera images, MP3's and general data on it and only doing partial backups. I had 2gb+ of digital camera images of the kids and family that had backups spread over several CD's. Getting nervous about the age of the drive (and other disasters that could destroy the drive) and having multiple disk backups, I purchased a DVD burner so that I could do frequent single disk backups. I installed the DVD burner and powered on the PC and the data drive failed and started making the rabid squirrel noises. I have many tricks from work that have successfully brought drives back to life, but not a single one of the worked on this. The motor for the read head had seized. Frankly, I didn't care about the 16GB of MP3's or even the email, I was only concerned about the digital camera pictures. 30 minutes later, after being unable to read 2 out of my 4 backup disks (cheap, no-name brand!) I was nearly devastated. Then it occurred to me that I had copied the entire digital image directory to a second PC about 4 weeks prior. I could not remember if I had deleted it or not, so it was a loooooong 3 minutes while the clunker booted up and I found that they were, in fact, still there. I had only lost a few images from the last 4 weeks. My new and improved, paranoid level, backup strategy is to backup to DVD monthly, make TWO copies, verify them, one copy stays here at home, one copy goes in my lock box at the bank with my film negatives and other selective irreplaceable items (you know, fire, flood, theft, kids and Kool-Aid). Gary _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
