Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic oh, yes, and a computer geek question about storage media.....

aaaaand another question.

when I was in a while ago having some drawings scanned, I ended up being advised to buy "CD-R" disks to store them on. brand is memorex, 52X, 700 MB, 80 mins, it says on the packaging. I thought, "cool! this'll take care of me for....like, centuries!" I got the minimum quantity (10). well, to make a long story short, on a subsequent trip I found out that after you have "accessed" the disk and stored a file on there, even if it's one beensy file of even 1K, the disk is kind of "locked" and you are unable to store any more info on it. it is, in effect, full, even if you have not used anywhere near the storage capacity on this 700-mg disk. they advised me to get this kind because it was "good for storing pictures". yeah. right.

so what kind of disks should I be using? i've got a write-able drive, but no scanner at home. I have others scan the drawings in, but ideally I would like a disk that I can, say, stick some drawings on there, and back up writing or whatever on my computer, move things around, delete, rewrite on the disk, etc. Is that "good for pictures" advice for ninnies? I'm sure any disk can hold the files it's given, right? I'm thinking they're talking about some impossibly subtle nuance when they say "this kind is good for pictures".

Whar you need is a CD-RW disk. CD-RW disks can be erased and rewritten. CD-R's are good for recording music or VCD's, because they can't be erased in that once they have been written on them they become a CD-ROM disk because the program effectively 'closes' the disk and so they become full even though they aren't full. Because I burn VCD movies and make my on music CD's I use CD-R's, but I have a CD-RW disk for loading files so I can print them at a printer in uni. If you have a USB port then just get a USB disk I think the minimum is they range from about 128MB to about 1 or 2GB these are vastly more convenient and I'd be using mine to if I knew where I have put it.

Hope this helps

Here's the thing. Most people take high quality pictures with their digital cameras, store them on their hard drives, then find that those good quality pics are taking up a lot of room. So, they take a CD-R and move batches of pictures onto it. The disk holds hundreds of pictures (700megs is a lot for removable storage. Floppy disks, for example, hold 1.44 megs), costs about $1, and lasts a long time without data corruption. You can stack the disks, store them, whatever. They make for good photo albums. Archive storage, really.

We're talking about family photos and stuff here. Things which you won't want to change and revamp once you're done with the basic touch-ups (contrast, brightness, redeye removal, etc).

Make sense?

What you need is, as you've noticed, quite different.

A CD-RW will help to some degree, except that you still run into the same problem. You can rewrite the disk, but doing so wipes out what was there before. Even if the program you have tells you that the disk hasn't been finalized and adding new stuff shouldn't be a problem.

It could still work for you, but it wouldn't quite be ideal.

A USB flash drive might be better. It's a little portable mini-drive that goes into your computer's USB port. It holds a fair amount (size varies, depending on how much you're willing to spend), and you can move files back and forth easily. You also don't need to worry about buying an entirely new drive (as opposed to Zip disks, which can hold 1 gig of files on something the size of a floppy, but which requires not only expensive disks but a drive capable of using them).

Of course, it depends on just how many files you need to move around and how big they are. It might turn out that an external hard drive is the best solution. Gigs and gigs of storage, and the prices are fairly reasonable these days (about $1/gig, give or take, starting around 60-80).

So, to sum up:

1. CD-RWs are slightly more expensive than CD-Rs, and require a CD-RW drive. They do, however, allow you to wipe out the disk and reuse it.

2. USB flash drives are easy to use, take up little space, and you can add or remove files at will. Unfortunately, they're more expensive per meg of storage, and they don't hold nearly as much as a CD. (A couple hundred megs at most.)

3. Zip disks still exist. They hold a lot of data, and can be used like floppys. But they're expensive and they require you to install a drive capable of using them.

4. An external hard drive will vastly increase your stoarge capabilities at a reasonable one-time cost, but it's not very portable. Also, once you're out of space, you're out of space. You'll have to delete stuff or get another new drive. (As opposed to a cheap stack of CDs.)

5. One thing I forgot to mention before is that there are a good number of storage formats created for digital cameras and such. Compact Flash, Memory Stick, etc. You can buy a USB drive capable of reading one or more formats (mine is a multi-card reader with 4 slots capable of handling about 9 different types of disk) and just use those. Compact Flash cards go up to something like 500mb (though you can expect to pay $100 - $150 or so for it), and can be used like floppies (read, write, move files, add or delete files, etc, all on the fly).

The exact solution for you depends on your needs and budget. Hope something here works.

Paul

Sileas, you didn't **** up with these CD-R's, you just burned them the wrong way. In one sentence, this means: there are two (three, later more) ways to burn a CD, one by closing and locking the whole disc and two by only closing the current session while leaving the available space still useable for any additions later.

In more detail (also with option number three):

a) "Disc At Once" - this burning mode allows only one single data-session on the CD-R and "closes" the CD, so it is in fact a read-only disc after this process even if there's technically unused space. Also: if this burning mode is used, your disc writing software doesn't care if it's a CD-RW, there's nothing more to write on (in order to re-use the CD-RW you will have to delete the conents entirely/format it).

b) "Track At Once" - here's an option for you. With this mode your software only writes the current session and leaves the disc open for later additions. So you may use up until 700MB. Of course there's also some limitations, like a maximum of 99 sessions per CD. You should also be aware that with each session, up to 1 MB of disc-space is used for header and footer data.

c) Emulating a floppy/harddisc/etc (called Packet Writing) - software products like Nero InCD allow your disc to be on the fly writeable for example via your Explorer by drag+drop. Though beware, this sounds good but also has major limitations. In case you're sharing the disc with other people, they need to use the same software as you do. Packet writing is also preferrably used with CD-RW and only recommended if the content is being changed often.


But actually, that's beside the point a bit. Regarding data-storage, CD-R's are mostly used for backup-purposes only. I don't recommend using recordable discs if you're going to add some data once in a while - that wasn't the plan when these were made available to the public.
In my opinion, the best and cheapest storage and backup-solution for home users is a USB-stick incombination with CD-R's. I'm using it that way, filling my two 512 MB sticks with correspondence and pictures from my cam until there's no more space available. Then the data to be archived is being burned on a CD-R as it's final destination This stick has other advantages too, so I always have the current data on my PC, my laptop and at work as well without a need to synchronize.

Mine is 1 gig. It cost about $30 in an Thanksgiving-weekend sale.

and another thank you! thanks for the brains, again. so CDs come with a bunch of caveats, huh? once again, good thing I only got ten of the frisbees.

in fact, I do have a zip drive, 100 meg, and a few disks. but the reason I had to buy the cds is because when I brought my first batch of drawings in to be scanned, I brought just your basic 3.5 inch disks to put them on, thinking they should all fit with ease, but it turned out that they were scanning them in such a way as to create monster, multi-meg files. they were in the 5-6 meg range, if I remember. they absolutely won't fit on a 3.5 incher, so they told me to turn around and go shopping, and gave me advice on what to buy. o well. lesson learned. I just wanted to know if these disks were as useless to me as I was beginning to suspect. I'll play with the above info and see what I come up with. thanks!


---ps they did eventually figger out how to create reasonable, 20-50k files, and you can see 'em in my "drawings?" thread in the FOLC productions area. so now i'm back to 3.5 inch disks for them!

Sorry. Should have been more specific. There's a higher-density zip format, the Jazz drive. Those hold a gig or two, IIRC. But your zip drive won't be able to write to a Jazz disk. So... back to needing to add or replace a drive.

Anyway, glad to hear they came up with a better size. Hope some of the info you got turns out to be useful at some point.

Paul

These days, the only reason to buy CD-R(W)'s is if you want to burn music discs to play in your stereo system. With the cost of DVD's these days, it's well worth it to stock up on a few DVD spindles when you see a good sale.

The main reason is that DVD's hold up to 4.3GB (4.7GB if you count the way hard drive manufacturers do at 1MB=1 million bytes) while CD's hold a paltry 700MB. Backing up with them is easy.

When it comes to computer disc burners, you'd be hard pressed to even find a CD-only burner nowadays. Most DVD burners are even dual layer capable where you get 8.5GB per disc, but those discs are still pretty pricey.

In just a few months, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray DVD burners will be on the market, further driving down the price of DVD's and DVD burners. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are competing technologies, like DVD-R and DVD+R, both based on blue lasers rather than the traditional red. The advantage of those is that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray can hold 25-100GB of information on a single DVD. Kinda nice, huh?

One caution about burning multisession CD's, while we're on the topic. Many CD players, especially older ones, are not multisession aware. So if you burn a song at first and then add a whole bunch later, you may be disappointed to find that your CD player only sees the first song and nothing else.

Those little flash discs can come in handy, too. I use mine mostly as a key fob but having a gigabyte of storage space just hanging off of my keychain can be pretty convenient. And with a pretty good sale, you can find one of those 1GB flash discs for around $50 or maybe even less.