HDD drives are not only mechanically far less durable than simple optical disks (CD/DVD) they also have a lot of sensitive and rather complex electronics ( the HDD controllers are built into the drives ) which also can fail far more easily than any CD/DVD. Things like shock, power surges, and static (ESD) can destroy a HDD while a CD/DVD disk isnt subject to those vunerabilities... I don't think that any HDD, even the best, is ever going to be within a magnitude of reliablility of a simple CD/DVD disk which would be wanted, at least for archival usage...
jco -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 4:50 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: DVDs In a message dated 1/2/2006 1:08:36 PM Pacific Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I don't get it, wouldn't a hard drive be far more susceptable to a catostrophic failure than a bunch of DVD disks? Im sure its more user friendly, but is it archival? jco ======== The disk in a HD is actually a much tougher media than a DVD. An external drive used just for picture storage would get less use than one used for programs and things too -- fewer read and write accesses. So it could last for a long, long time. What goes wrong with HDs is the read/write arm poops. That doesn't mean the disc itself is bad. Usually it isn't. Sure one can have bad sectors, but they can be isolated. So data can be recovered from a crashed HD. And lots do. I even did it myself once with a free software program I found on the Net and a HD that had gone belly up. Its FAT was scrambled because the arm had skipped a lot. I wasn't recovering pictures, and I recovered files in chunks, but I got most of them back. I wasn't willing at the time to spend money at one of the places that do that sort of thing. But I bet they could have recovered it all. Wouldn't have surprised me. I just wasn't recovering anything critical so it wasn't crucial to me. I feel happier with HDs than DVDs. But I think both are good if used in combination. Marnie aka Doe
