does anyone remember when cd burners first came out?

[Oyeve]

The worse ones were those NEC drives with the caddies.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I must be one of the few on here who still use an optical drive. My blu-ray burner gets used for totally legal and legitimate backup purposes.

It's crossed my mind to get a Bluray burner for long term backups of important/archive stuff, but the media is so expensive, it's cheaper to just store on spinning disks, and also have copies on cold disks. LTO tapes have also crossed my mind, they are cheaper (per GB) but the drives are super expensive. I always end up going back to just hard drives.

 

[mooncancook]

I was one of the early adopter for cd burner. *piracy bragging removed*
Edit: don't really remember the brand, possibly Memorex

We've already had two mod posts in this thread about bragging on piracy and you do it anyway?

AT Moderator ElFenix

 

[mikeymikec]

It's crossed my mind to get a Bluray burner for long term backups of important/archive stuff, but the media is so expensive, it's cheaper to just store on spinning disks, and also have copies on cold disks. LTO tapes have also crossed my mind, they are cheaper (per GB) but the drives are super expensive. I always end up going back to just hard drives.

As a result of this thread popping up again I thought I'd check the cost of DVD DL media, which has come down a bit since I last checked. If I didn't have a stack of 4GB DVD recordable blank discs already I might consider it.

 

[WilliamM2]

4x Memorex for $99 after rebate in early '99 from Staples. It was actually very reliable. Discs were always free from Staples too.

 

[rh71]

I just pulled out a bag full of unopened CD-RWs. Completely useless these days. I still have a DVD writer in my desktop though. Last I used it to burn my (yes mine) 2017 tax software.

 

[bobman99]

if so, how much did they cost? did you get one?

Burners came out around 1990 and cost $100,000 or so (Kodak did a lot with them with the photo CD). By early 1995 they were 1x and about $2,000 (for an external SCSI) and blanks were like $15 each. (Check out the Pinnacle Micro RCD-1000 with its caddy load system). I got mine in early 1999 for close to $300 for a external SCSI 4x write once (RW was like an extra $75 or so). Blanks were about $1.50 each or so, and I usually recorded at 2x and only coastered maybe 10%.

 

[shortylickens]

Double necro.
Those are rare.

Adding to the thread: I havent burned a CD in many years. It was a compilation album for a friend who had a CD player in her car.

 

[trungma]

It was an awesome time! I just modded the playstation to play burn cds so I was busy renting and burning as many games as possible. I got a HP 2x burner from a friend for almost $300 I think. It would work about 75 percent of the time. Each successful burn a gift from the gods.

 

[MtnMan]

I got a 1x (CD only) at some point. No idea how much I paid.

I do remember that before I started a burn, I made sure to disable the screen saver, as that kicking in would kill it. You didn't even dare touch the mouse once it started. Start it and tiptoe out of the room.

 

[bbhaag]

Double necro.
Those are rare.

Adding to the thread: I havent burned a CD in many years. It was a compilation album for a friend who had a CD player in her car.

Yeah I can't even remember the last time I burned a cd or even a dvd. I know it has to be at least 4+ years ago because that is when I built my 6700K system from the ground up and I chose a case that didn't have any front drive bays. I remember looking at my Phenom2 build with a cd/dvd burner in it and thinking "I haven't used this thing in so long does my new build really need one?" At the time my father in law gave me shit for skipping it but honestly I don't miss it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Each successful burn a gift from the gods.

LOL, you know it! Verb. dark azo blues ftw.

 

[deustroop]

Am I the only one who still uses burners? I have always had two in my main comp. Had Plextor SCSI for years but since SATA so surpasses that tech I use ASUS DVD burners. They are handy for video -> DVD burns, but mostly to burn music CDs for home and auto trips.

 

[lxskllr]

I never burn anything. If I'm burning a disc, it feels like a failure, and my consolation prize for not getting my data transfer of choice. I still want a burner in my computer, but that's mainly to read discs. If I have the reader anyway, might as well get one that writes in case I ever need it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

When I look back, I'd say about 90% of my use of optical media was actually for other people and not for myself. I used to use CDs to archive stuff once in a while but not more than that. I should go through that stuff some time actually and download it all to another archive, as the media does degrade over time.

Spinning disks + cold backups is the simplest way. Though I really do want to look into a better way to archive data that I don't want to change. Having it on spinning disks does have the risk of it being changed/deleted by error and then those changes making it into the backup. Suppose Blurays may still be viable for this sort of thing.