3 ms·

I used to be concerned about optical media longevity. I bought Taiyo-Yuden discs. I checked their integrity. I stored them carefully. But the format became obso

by jl6 4y ago

I used to be concerned about optical media longevity. I bought Taiyo-Yuden discs. I checked their integrity. I stored them carefully. But the format became obsolete (for me) long before the media degraded. Recordable discs are just too small for the backup use case I had. Optical drives are still available of course, but they are now rarely standard with a new PC or laptop, and soon will become specialist components, and then it won’t be long before the drives become a greater limit to longevity than the media.

sergers 4y ago
I was a fan of the matte white top printable taiyo udens. Back in my sharing early days, I probably had like 1000+ dvds of anime, movies, hk film, games etc easily. I had so much media that I didn't have time to watch it all, let alone watch it again in the future (there are some gems that I actually went out and purchased retail copies). Plus alot of the shit would get released at higher quality making my archive obsolete (not always) One day I just chucked it all out.... Years of archiving, downloading, burning ripping. Was a waste of time and money in hindsight
- pcf 4y ago
  Exactly the same here, except that I gave all those discs to friends. And I shudder to think how much time I wasted on all that archiving, when it ultimately wasn't worth it at all. Now, I'm still doing much of the same, but this time downloading movies, TV series, documentaries etc. via Snahp to my archive on an external HDD. The other day I suddenly had a realisation: Why on earth am I downloading 1080p films to watch sometime in the future when I'm probably going to buy a 4K UHD TV in six months or so from now? So I need to stop doing so much of this digital hoarding. In the end it's not good for me, and I could instead download whatever I want to watch when I'm actually GOING to watch it.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    The problem is that many times, the "originals" (or official sources) become unavailable. There's a ton of old 80s/90s DOS games and 8-bit games that we still have now because of digital hoarders. If it weren't for them, they'd be lost because the original companies are long gone and most people just trash stuff. Now look at how much stuff regularly disappears from video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      I'm just glad that netflix is still operating their disc rental plan. If you want to watch niche, hard-to-get stuff, that's one of the better options, IMO. I legally can't recommend anyone copy/rip discs that they rent.
- kikokikokiko 4y ago
  In my case it was early MMA fights, I was obssessed with martial arts in general, and up to 2007 I literally had a 500+ collection of burned CDs and DVDs, with every single fight from every major promotion in the world, catalogued by date, fighter's involved, styles, results etc. Until someday I realized that I probably would never rewatch any of those fights, I would simply watch the new ones that are happening everyday. Hoarding is hoarding, be it of "real things" be it digital ones. Some time later I gave all of my collection to a BJJ colleague of mine, and I never burned another CD since. Life's too short, and accumulating stuff is just a massive waste of time.
  - mmcgaha 4y ago
    I recently left my home for an apartment and came to the same conclusion about accumulated stuff. Watches, guns, calculators, shirts, shoes were all bad but worst of all trying to cram 1000 lbs of books into a two bedroom apartment is ridiculous. I am working on minimizing but it is hard to let go of these objects that I love. Thankfully I have long since moved my data hoard off to cloud storage so at least that only costs money.
  - anthk 4y ago
    In my case I've got the complete collection from The Twilight Zone and Star Trek:TNG among the movies. Everything else it's just a rehash from these scripts.
kalleboo 4y ago
Just my photo library is over 1.5 TiB, there just not way to have long-term offline backups of that, you have no choice but to run and maintain a file server and cloud backups
- mrjin 4y ago
  1.5 TiB is not much really. Any mobile HDD will do. I've a whole bunch of them. Oldest were over a decade, no issues at all. The only issue is that they have to be labeled clearly, or you are going to have a hard time to find whereabouts.
  - Double_a_92 4y ago
    You do realize that HDDs can randomly break, right? To keep a proper backup you need to have multiple copies of all your data and also regularly access / copy it.
  - kalleboo 4y ago
    I've had really bad luck with the reliability of mobile HDDs in storage. Try to use them after 3-4 years and they just die. Maybe I've just been unlucky?
nordsieck 4y ago
> Optical drives are still available of course, but they are now rarely standard with a new PC or laptop, and soon will become specialist components, and then it won’t be long before the drives become a greater limit to longevity than the media. IMO, the #1 use case for optical drives is probably playing music in the car. For anything old enough that it doesn't have an aux port, it's the best solution. * Tape adapters add a lot of noise. Maybe different drives work better than what I've got, but I tried and it's totally unworkable * Short range FM adapters are terrible. Similar noise to tape adapters and the quality is really prone to degradation depending on the EM environment. The stock of older, working cars is quite large. Eventually it'll get used up (outside of enthusiasts), but that'll probably take a few decades longer. And as long as people are listening to CDs in their cars, there'll be a demand for the ability to burn them.
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > IMO, the #1 use case for optical drives is probably playing music in the car. For anything old enough that it doesn't have an aux port, it's the best solution. Not even that old. A friend of mine bought a BMW MY2020 and it still has a CD-player (it was an extra, but it was at least still available in 2020). I wouldn't be surprised if you could still order new car, today, with a CD player.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    That's a fair point. But I have to imagine that people who have a choice between AUX/bluetooth and CDs, and choose CDs are in the minority. It's kind of a pain to install a CD burning app (which has long since atrophied from most music programs), plug in a removable drive, etc. I only do it because the alternatives are much worse.
- ridgered4 4y ago
  My 2012 car supports reading mp3s off a CD which greatly improved the utility for me. I kind of prefer it over the AUX jack since I hate messing with a touchscreen phone while driving. The radio has actual buttons and since it only does one thing it doesn't need to be messed with much to begin with.

by jl6 4y ago

sergers 4y ago

I was a fan of the matte white top printable taiyo udens. Back in my sharing early days, I probably had like 1000+ dvds of anime, movies, hk film, games etc easily. I had so much media that I didn't have time to watch it all, let alone watch it again in the future (there are some gems that I actually went out and purchased retail copies). Plus alot of the shit would get released at higher quality making my archive obsolete (not always) One day I just chucked it all out.... Years of archiving, downloading, burning ripping. Was a waste of time and money in hindsight

pcf 4y ago
Exactly the same here, except that I gave all those discs to friends. And I shudder to think how much time I wasted on all that archiving, when it ultimately wasn't worth it at all. Now, I'm still doing much of the same, but this time downloading movies, TV series, documentaries etc. via Snahp to my archive on an external HDD. The other day I suddenly had a realisation: Why on earth am I downloading 1080p films to watch sometime in the future when I'm probably going to buy a 4K UHD TV in six months or so from now? So I need to stop doing so much of this digital hoarding. In the end it's not good for me, and I could instead download whatever I want to watch when I'm actually GOING to watch it.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The problem is that many times, the "originals" (or official sources) become unavailable. There's a ton of old 80s/90s DOS games and 8-bit games that we still have now because of digital hoarders. If it weren't for them, they'd be lost because the original companies are long gone and most people just trash stuff. Now look at how much stuff regularly disappears from video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    I'm just glad that netflix is still operating their disc rental plan. If you want to watch niche, hard-to-get stuff, that's one of the better options, IMO. I legally can't recommend anyone copy/rip discs that they rent.
kikokikokiko 4y ago
In my case it was early MMA fights, I was obssessed with martial arts in general, and up to 2007 I literally had a 500+ collection of burned CDs and DVDs, with every single fight from every major promotion in the world, catalogued by date, fighter's involved, styles, results etc. Until someday I realized that I probably would never rewatch any of those fights, I would simply watch the new ones that are happening everyday. Hoarding is hoarding, be it of "real things" be it digital ones. Some time later I gave all of my collection to a BJJ colleague of mine, and I never burned another CD since. Life's too short, and accumulating stuff is just a massive waste of time.
- mmcgaha 4y ago
  I recently left my home for an apartment and came to the same conclusion about accumulated stuff. Watches, guns, calculators, shirts, shoes were all bad but worst of all trying to cram 1000 lbs of books into a two bedroom apartment is ridiculous. I am working on minimizing but it is hard to let go of these objects that I love. Thankfully I have long since moved my data hoard off to cloud storage so at least that only costs money.
- anthk 4y ago
  In my case I've got the complete collection from The Twilight Zone and Star Trek:TNG among the movies. Everything else it's just a rehash from these scripts.

kalleboo 4y ago

Just my photo library is over 1.5 TiB, there just not way to have long-term offline backups of that, you have no choice but to run and maintain a file server and cloud backups

mrjin 4y ago
1.5 TiB is not much really. Any mobile HDD will do. I've a whole bunch of them. Oldest were over a decade, no issues at all. The only issue is that they have to be labeled clearly, or you are going to have a hard time to find whereabouts.
- Double_a_92 4y ago
  You do realize that HDDs can randomly break, right? To keep a proper backup you need to have multiple copies of all your data and also regularly access / copy it.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  I've had really bad luck with the reliability of mobile HDDs in storage. Try to use them after 3-4 years and they just die. Maybe I've just been unlucky?

nordsieck 4y ago

> Optical drives are still available of course, but they are now rarely standard with a new PC or laptop, and soon will become specialist components, and then it won’t be long before the drives become a greater limit to longevity than the media. IMO, the #1 use case for optical drives is probably playing music in the car. For anything old enough that it doesn't have an aux port, it's the best solution. * Tape adapters add a lot of noise. Maybe different drives work better than what I've got, but I tried and it's totally unworkable * Short range FM adapters are terrible. Similar noise to tape adapters and the quality is really prone to degradation depending on the EM environment. The stock of older, working cars is quite large. Eventually it'll get used up (outside of enthusiasts), but that'll probably take a few decades longer. And as long as people are listening to CDs in their cars, there'll be a demand for the ability to burn them.

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> IMO, the #1 use case for optical drives is probably playing music in the car. For anything old enough that it doesn't have an aux port, it's the best solution. Not even that old. A friend of mine bought a BMW MY2020 and it still has a CD-player (it was an extra, but it was at least still available in 2020). I wouldn't be surprised if you could still order new car, today, with a CD player.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  That's a fair point. But I have to imagine that people who have a choice between AUX/bluetooth and CDs, and choose CDs are in the minority. It's kind of a pain to install a CD burning app (which has long since atrophied from most music programs), plug in a removable drive, etc. I only do it because the alternatives are much worse.
ridgered4 4y ago
My 2012 car supports reading mp3s off a CD which greatly improved the utility for me. I kind of prefer it over the AUX jack since I hate messing with a touchscreen phone while driving. The radio has actual buttons and since it only does one thing it doesn't need to be messed with much to begin with.