Re: Finally long term stable high density storage

On Sun, 20 Oct 2024 09:51:49 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
<dtravel@sonic.net> wrote:

On 10/20/2024 9:41 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 
Disk-space is so cheap and readily available already that -while I
wouldn't sneeze at a long-term archival medium- it's not really
necessary. It's surprisingly hard to fill up multi-terabyte sized
disks under ordinary usage ;-)
 

"Hold my beer."  ;)

Tru' dat.

I remember the days of Iomega Zip Disks; 100mb on a single disk! 74
floppy disks worth!* I bought a five-pack of Zip disks, transferred
all my data (including imaging my installation floppies from my game
collection) and had hundreds of megabytes to spare. And while Zip
disks weren't cheap (IIRC, they went for around $15 per disk), neither
were they so inexpensive that I wouldn't be able to accumulate more if
necessary. Were I to buy another ten games, a single ZIP disk would
easily archive all their installation floppies. I'd never run out of
space! Or so I thought...

But when ZIP disks proved inadequate, CD-R had fortunately come to our
rescue. Almost 7 times the capacity of a single ZIP disk on each
CD-ROM, and each disk was a tenth the price! CD-Rs were also easier to
store (if only because you could  store hundreds of them in a single
folder). Plus, while not everyone had a ZIP drive, almost every PC
came with a CD-ROM. Once again, my storage problems were permanently
solved!

Oh, wait; maybe not. But lo and behold! DVD-R has appeared! 8GB per
disk!** Ten times the capacity of a single CD-ROM (800 times the
capacity of a ZIP disk. 5500 floppy disks!). Just as cheap and easy to
store as CD-Rs, and actually quicker to write! Surely now my storage
concerns were forever alleviated!

So, yeah... history suggests that my reliance on hard-drives (and
cloud-storage backups) certainly has a limited shelf-life. Still, the
entirety of all the installers from my GOG library fits into a 2TB,
14TB+ drives are easily available (and fairly cheap) and for the time
being HDD capacity is outstripping my ability to fill it. Eventually
I'll have to find some new medium, but for the time being?

HDD will do me fine.







 --------   
* This fallacious belief of mine actually goes back even further.
Transferring from the Apple ][ (with its 160kb disks) to the PC
(1.44MB _and_ a hard drive!) was like walking out of a tiny closet
into the Great Steppes; so much space! Surely nothing could ever fill
it!
A few years later, enter Ultima VII with its 25MB install footprint.
;-)

** Yes, I know; DVD-R started with 4GB capacity and only reached 8GB
some years later. Allow me some poetic license! ;-)