Are rewritable CDs/DVDs less reliable than CD-R / DVD-+R?

[lxskllr]

If you wrote a ~4GB ISO to a 32GB drive, wouldn't you need to do something to clean up the fs for the rest of the drive? Or would you start by formatting the drive with the fs that the ISO ends up writing?

I'm not entirely sure. I don't typically keep install media. I'll put an iso on a drive, install, then wipe it when I need the drive for something else. I want to say you can drop files on the drive that are readable in gnu/linux and still keep the bootable iso, but that's something you'd have to play with to know for sure.

 

[mxnerd]

If you wrote a ~4GB ISO to a 32GB drive, wouldn't you need to do something to clean up the fs for the rest of the drive? Or would you start by formatting the drive with the fs that the ISO ends up writing?

That's why you use YUMI - the mutiboot USB writer.

You can write several ISO onto same USB drives and you get a menu to install different OS.

It sometimes will confuse with same type of OS on the same drive (let's say Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2)

It will retain FAT32 or NTFS file system on the USB drive and will not format the drive if you choose not to.

 

[rchunter]

I think I have a couple verbatim 100 pack dvd-r spindles in storage somewhere.
Maybe never get used, I haven’t burned one in at least a couple years.

 

[bononos]

I haven't bought new in a while. Used to use Taiyo Yuden CD and DVD with a few Kodak CDr. What do you use now to check the manufacturer? My Mdisc have been pretty good, but I don't think I've ever verified who made them.

I got it from burning software or scanning tools like optidrive control to get the manufacturer id. There are low quality fakes with fake MID. DVD+r media pretty much mediocre and bad quality, all the good quality media manufacturing businesses have shifted to BD. And now BD is probably going to die off because prices for large capacity flash drives and harddrives are getting cheaper.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

And now BD is probably going to die off because prices for large capacity flash drives and harddrives are getting cheaper.

Once QLC hits mainstream, you'll likely be right. But right now I can still get 2.5TB (50x 50GB DL BD) of storage space for the price of ~1.5 256GB flash drive. If we look at BDXL media, you can get 200GB (2x 100GB BDXL) for about the same price as a 128GB flashdrive. A single rewritable 100GB BDXL is a bit more then a 128GB flashdrive.

Of course, depending on your geographical location, YMMV. And very much at that.

Then there is still the NAND flash data retention issues. Which I suspect won't be bettered by cheap QLC flash.

But even then, I honestly wouldn't bother with optical media for anything beyond archival purposes at this time. Or if you have some legacy application of course.

 

[Borealis7]

you are all forgetting the cost of the BD burner. Flash drives have no additional costs.
i didn't know about the Flash degradation issue, i have some sticks with MP3s from early 2000's and they still play fine in my car.
if i plug them in once in a while and run a sweep will that prevent degradation?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

you are all forgetting the cost of the BD burner. Flash drives have no additional costs.
i didn't know about the Flash degradation issue, i have some sticks with MP3s from early 2000's and they still play fine in my car.
if i plug them in once in a while and run a sweep will that prevent degradation?

I'll try not to paint a certain individual on the wall, so please bear with me.

The "problem" is that JEDEC only mandates a 1 year retention time for consumer flash when unpowered. Everything over that is not guaranteed. We just don't -know- how sub 25nm NAND handles long term storage, because it hasn't been around for that long. The flash cells are getting very, very tiny, which has implications for the amount of leakage they can tolerate. I think I read somewhere that 16nm Micron NAND is essentially counting individual electrons when determining charge in the cells. That's serious food for thought. Newer MLC and TLC (and soon QLC) are susceptible to decreasing charge because they, unlike SLC, store more then one bit per cell. So it matters whether the charge reported is f.x. 0.8v or 0.7v. It gives a completely different result. This requires serious ECC for the controller to untangle, particularly for TLC and QLC.

The other thing is the quality of NAND that goes into flash drives. It's unlikely to be particularly high quality, since that has already been used for SSDs. With the really good stuff going into enterprise gear.

It is not an issue for everyday use of NAND, but whether it can handle laying unpowered "in a closet" for 20-30 years. F.x. DVD-RAM is proven to be able to do that, since it's been around since '96. We archivist types tend to be particularly conservative with new technology...

Now 3D NAND should go some way towards resetting the clock on this, but has been around for an even shorter amount of time.

Those old sticks you have are most likely 50nm+ SLC NAND. Think built like a tank vs the "sports car" of newer NAND. If you also use them regularly, they're not unpowered for longer then the NAND can handle. Which for SLC is likely a long time.

Edit; oh, yeah, the burner. Thankfully USB drives exist, so at least you only need one drive. Of course, they're expensive, but bring fringe benefits like BD movie playback.

 

[BSim500]

you are all forgetting the cost of the BD burner. Flash drives have no additional costs.
i didn't know about the Flash degradation issue, i have some sticks with MP3s from early 2000's and they still play fine in my car.
if i plug them in once in a while and run a sweep will that prevent degradation?

As Insert_Nickname said, one single year is all that's guaranteed from unpowered flash. Zero problem for SSD's used as a system drive as they can rewrite / refresh cells. Big problem for unpowered archival backups. (Plus flash controllers can randomly die at any time even if the flash is perfect).The old "I have a really old flash drive I haven't plugged in for 10 years ago and it still reads fine" is not abnormal as they were made during an era of SLC / MLC + 25-40nm mainstream cell sizes. The endurance of SLC is 100k P/E (write-erase) cycles, MLC was 5-25k. Modern TLC is barely 1-2k and QLC can be as little as 200 cycles, ie, new flash is up to 100-500x less durable than older flash. The modern cheapness comes at the expense of durability, and none of them can rewrite / refresh anything if they're unplugged.

As for the cost of BD-R drive, if someone really requires high-reliability WORM archives that'll last 10, 20, 30, etc, years, there's simply no +20 year archival substitute even if you can buy a Yottabyte USB stick for $0.01 that only lasts the same 1 year. It's no real different to a "Yes but you buy 18-36x $50 A4 sized printers for the cost of 1x A0-A2 sized printer, then staple the pages together!" also not being a substitute for an architect / designer who needs to print on A0-A2 sized paper (and thinks nothing of spending $1,000 purely on CAD / design software). $70 really is nothing for higher long-term data security. Unlike every other component in a system, the value of any backup drive isn't just the price of the drives, it's the value of the potentially priceless / irreplacable data that's on it (or for "replaceable data", the cost not just in money but time, eg, thousands of hours restoring a rare music collection with hard to source albums). So to me, an additional "layer" of backups for £60 specifically designed for longer vs shorter term use is a bargain, (and contrary to popular belief, many of us who "still" use optical do so as an extra layer in addition to using HDD's, NAS's, USB flash, etc, as a multi-layered highly redundant backup strategy, not just rely on it as a single backup by itself).

 

[dlerious]

As for the cost of BD-R drive, if someone really requires high-reliability WORM archives that'll last 10, 20, 30, etc, years, there's simply no +20 year archival substitute even if you can buy a Yottabyte USB stick for $0.01 that only lasts the same 1 year. It's no real different to a "Yes but you buy 18-36x $50 A4 sized printers for the cost of 1x A0-A2 sized printer, then staple the pages together!" also not being a substitute for an architect / designer who needs to print on A0-A2 sized paper (and thinks nothing of spending $1,000 purely on CAD / design software). $70 really is nothing for higher long-term data security. Unlike every other component in a system, the value of any backup drive isn't just the price of the drives, it's the value of the potentially priceless / irreplacable data that's on it (or for "replaceable data", the cost not just in money but time, eg, thousands of hours restoring a rare music collection with hard to source albums). So to me, an additional "layer" of backups for £60 specifically designed for longer vs shorter term use is a bargain, (and contrary to popular belief, many of us who "still" use optical do so as an extra layer in addition to using HDD's, NAS's, USB flash, etc, as a multi-layered highly redundant backup strategy, not just rely on it as a single backup by itself).

That's where I started. I have a couple hundred albums from the 60's and 70's I recorded to my computer. I saved the raw file and maybe a copy with post processing. I still buy vinyl, but not as much as before and most of it comes with a digital copy now. I have over 5000 albums on bandcamp who lets you re-download, but that would take longer than finding the Blurays and copying them back over. Of course if Bandcamp ever ceases to exist or I lose internet connectivity/ISP puts draconian caps on, I'd have a harder time recovering from a catastrophic loss.