Cost of DVD as data storage versus HDD (UK)

half_pint wrote:
"guv" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:56:21 +0100, "half_pint"
wrote:

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

True I am considering that option as you can get a dvd
writer for about £40 now, little more than a cd writer and
a dvdrw will write cds anyway.
I think I will get a brand new PC with a writer on it as my current
PC is ancient, however having said that I dont think new harddrives
will be any faster
than mine ( speeds are basically the same 5400 or 7200 ) so I cant
see them writing any faster. Prehaps someone can explain how the
magis works?

It definately would write and read faster than your current 3 gig
drive. The motherboard in a new system, would also ensure faster
access times and faster throughput.

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!

My hard drives have never failed and probably never will, not
even one bad sector. I would probably get some kind of warning
anyway and the data would still be 'there'

Not guaranteed. In fact, I'd say you're overdue for a
disc failure now that you've invoked Murphy's Law.

Maybe, maybe not, I recently looked at the mean time between
failures of a drive on ebay (fairly common drive) and it worked out
at about 50 years, (probably better than a human body).

How did you come to that conclusion? Has ebay been going 50 years?

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
**** 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.

Also most failures are very early, once you get past this the life
expectance is very
long so my drive may well last 100 years.

Nonsense. You should be grateful it has last you the 7 years it has.
Expecting 100 years is virtually inconceivable.


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.

Bit better than a CD DVD or their respectrive drives, of which the
MTBF appears in my experience to be 2 weeks!!!

You seem to have a great deal of bad luck with CD drives. That in
itself is not normal.

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.

--
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http://tinyurl.com/38yjc
Earn money reading emails!
http://tinyurl.com/2pcgm

In article ,
says...
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.

Even though drives are still 7200rpm, the density on
each platter within has gone up dramatically. Assuming
a worst case scenario of an old 10GB/platter design vs
the newer 40GB/platter designs, 4x as much data passes
under the read/write head on every rotation of the disc.
That means the newer 40GB/platter design has a 4x higher
theoretical bandwidth then the older 10GB/platter
design, if both drives operate at the same rpm.

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.

The big issues with drives with regards to physical
failu

- electronics failure, either due to static discharge or
poor manufacturing or overheating
- ball bearings that wear down and eventually fail (such
as the ball bearings that hold the central spindle in
place)
- head crash, either destroying the head or damaging the
surface of the media
- the wires connecting the heads to the control
circuitry are constantly being flexed, eventually they
may break

A hard drive, while sealed against dust, is actually not
air tight (there are filtered vent holes) so that air
pressure can equalize to whatever the outside air
pressure is.

Perhaps DVD Ram is a better option for yourself?

What is that?

DVD-RAM is a DVD disc that is specifically designed for
many many many read/write operations. Kinda like the
old magento-optical drives. However, I don't believe
that DVD-RAM discs can be read in regular DVD-ROM
drives.

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.
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.

Forget about packet writing with DVD+RW/DVD-RW discs.
It's buggy beyond belief (about on par with the old CD-
RW packet writing). More trouble then it's worth and a
removable hard drive, USB/firewire drive or thumbdrive
(flash) is a heck of a lot more reliable.

"Simon Finnigan" wrote in message
...
half_pint wrote:
"guv" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:56:21 +0100, "half_pint"
wrote:

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

True I am considering that option as you can get a dvd
writer for about £40 now, little more than a cd writer and
a dvdrw will write cds anyway.
I think I will get a brand new PC with a writer on it as my current
PC is ancient, however having said that I dont think new harddrives
will be any faster
than mine ( speeds are basically the same 5400 or 7200 ) so I cant
see them writing any faster. Prehaps someone can explain how the
magis works?

It definately would write and read faster than your current 3 gig
drive. The motherboard in a new system, would also ensure faster
access times and faster throughput.

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!

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


My hard drives have never failed and probably never will, not
even one bad sector. I would probably get some kind of warning
anyway and the data would still be 'there'

Not guaranteed. In fact, I'd say you're overdue for a
disc failure now that you've invoked Murphy's Law.

Maybe, maybe not, I recently looked at the mean time between
failures of a drive on ebay (fairly common drive) and it worked out
at about 50 years, (probably better than a human body).

How did you come to that conclusion? Has ebay been going 50 years?

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
**** 50 years down the line when all the company directors are dead,
and liable to prosecution :OP

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.


Also most failures are very early, once you get past this the life
expectance is very
long so my drive may well last 100 years.

Nonsense. You should be grateful it has last you the 7 years it has.
Expecting 100 years is virtually inconceivable.


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.

Sealed bearings


Bit better than a CD DVD or their respectrive drives, of which the
MTBF appears in my experience to be 2 weeks!!!

You seem to have a great deal of bad luck with CD drives. That in
itself is not normal.

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.


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

--
What am I selling on ebay right now?
http://tinyurl.com/38yjc
Earn money reading emails!
http://tinyurl.com/2pcgm

"Toshi1873" wrote in message
. ..
In article ,
says...
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.

Even though drives are still 7200rpm, the density on
each platter within has gone up dramatically. Assuming
a worst case scenario of an old 10GB/platter design vs
the newer 40GB/platter designs, 4x as much data passes
under the read/write head on every rotation of the disc.
That means the newer 40GB/platter design has a 4x higher
theoretical bandwidth then the older 10GB/platter
design, if both drives operate at the same rpm.

I will have to verify that but it sounds reasonable.
However it still take 1/7200 second to revolve the drive to
read data just behind the read head?


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.

The big issues with drives with regards to physical
failu

- electronics failure, either due to static discharge or
poor manufacturing or overheating
- ball bearings that wear down and eventually fail (such
as the ball bearings that hold the central spindle in
place)
- head crash, either destroying the head or damaging the
surface of the media
- the wires connecting the heads to the control
circuitry are constantly being flexed, eventually they
may break

A hard drive, while sealed against dust, is actually not
air tight (there are filtered vent holes) so that air
pressure can equalize to whatever the outside air
pressure is.

Well fortunately I have had no probs with my drives which
will become pretty obsolete when I buy a new PC I expect the
new drives will also out last the working lifespan of the PC.


Perhaps DVD Ram is a better option for yourself?

What is that?

DVD-RAM is a DVD disc that is specifically designed for
many many many read/write operations. Kinda like the
old magento-optical drives. However, I don't believe
that DVD-RAM discs can be read in regular DVD-ROM
drives.

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.
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.

Forget about packet writing with DVD+RW/DVD-RW discs.
It's buggy beyond belief (about on par with the old CD-
RW packet writing).

Not sure wht you mean by packet writing, normal data writing
(not audio) you mean?

I gave up on CDRW anyway, too slow (formatting..........zzzzz...)
and a bit pointleess really, may as well burn another 20p CD.

They would be OK for coaster prevention on audio as you could
trial run on a rewritable I guess and then (hopefully) burn a CDR (my player
won't
play CDRW)

More trouble then it's worth and a
removable hard drive, USB/firewire drive or thumbdrive
(flash) is a heck of a lot more reliable.

A bog standand hard drive is pretty removeable, especially
if like my second drive, it just rests in the case ( unfastened by screws).
Just unclips the IDE and power cables and you can put it in your
pocket!!

half_pint wrote:
"Simon Finnigan" wrote in message
...
half_pint wrote:
"guv" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:56:21 +0100, "half_pint"
wrote:

Creating a playlist may require several CD changes.

Which is one advantage of collapsing your collection
from CD-R to DVD-R... you'll need 6x fewer discs.

True I am considering that option as you can get a dvd
writer for about £40 now, little more than a cd writer and
a dvdrw will write cds anyway.
I think I will get a brand new PC with a writer on it as my
current PC is ancient, however having said that I dont think new
harddrives will be any faster
than mine ( speeds are basically the same 5400 or 7200 ) so I cant
see them writing any faster. Prehaps someone can explain how the
magis works?

It definately would write and read faster than your current 3 gig
drive. The motherboard in a new system, would also ensure faster
access times and faster throughput.

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!

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?

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?

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

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.


Also most failures are very early, once you get past this the life
expectance is very
long so my drive may well last 100 years.

Nonsense. You should be grateful it has last you the 7 years it
has. Expecting 100 years is virtually inconceivable.


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.

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.

Bit better than a CD DVD or their respectrive drives, of which the
MTBF appears in my experience to be 2 weeks!!!

You seem to have a great deal of bad luck with CD drives. That in
itself is not normal.

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.


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.

--
What am I selling on ebay right now?
http://tinyurl.com/38yjc
Earn money reading emails!
http://tinyurl.com/2pcgm

"Simon Finnigan" wrote:
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.


Tim
--
Copyright, patents and trademarks are government-granted,
time-limited monopolies. Intellectual property does not exist.

wrote:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:44:32 +0100, "Simon Finnigan"
wrote:

half_pint wrote:

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.


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.

--
What am I selling on ebay right now?
http://tinyurl.com/38yjc
Earn money reading emails!
http://tinyurl.com/2pcgm

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:44:32 +0100, "Simon Finnigan"
wrote:

half_pint wrote:

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.


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.

Tim Auton wrote:
"Simon Finnigan" wrote:
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.

--
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http://tinyurl.com/38yjc
Earn money reading emails!
http://tinyurl.com/2pcgm

"Tim Auton" wrote in message
...
"Simon Finnigan" wrote:
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
--
Copyright, patents and trademarks are government-granted,
time-limited monopolies. Intellectual property does not exist.