[ale] OT:DVD burner recommendations

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 19:14 -0400, Jim Lynch wrote:
> So what's a DVD RAM do for you?  I'm guessing its a very slow persistent 
> storage device, but  what's the advantage over  disk?

You can burn ISO images to the things, you can format them with any
arbitrary filesystem (ext2/3/4, UDF, FAT32), and the media provides
certain types of storage guarantees that floppies don't.  It's faster
than floppy, and faster than packet-writing to CD-RW/DVD-RW.

I bought a two pack from Wally World, and have been playing with them.
If only they were less expensive, I would be able to actually do things
like back up segments of my $HOME onto topically oriented media, which
would be fairly easy for me to manage.  When I reach a point of wanting
to make the backup immutable, I can then burn it to a DVD-R or
something.  Oh, and they are faster than CD-RW and DVD-RW, and packet
writing doesn't seem to work very well, if at all, and I wanted big
floppies.  :)

There is also a decent part of me that misses having the ability to put
files on a media and have them with me.  And the media is just as
portable as a floppy, at least to drives that can read DVD-RAM media
(which seems to be just about any new CD/DVD combo device).

Also, given the size of the media, it's easy to use one side of one
media for project work.  Holding one project on side A of a disc, and
another on side B, gives you the ability to shelve the project when it's
done, and pull it back out later when something needs to be done to it
again, without keeping it as extra clutter on the hard drive.  I kinda
hate the fact that hard drives keep growing, because I _hate_ the
organizational impact of having such vastly huge amounts of storage.
It's great for servers... though I have this huge drive in my
workstation and I can't imagine filling it up except out of necessity.

It would be kind of nice for some sort of durable, persistent, removable
storage solution (not USB flash drives, either) to catch on again.  It
is just very simple to have a disc, pop it in, do some work on it, and
then remove it again.  It's easier to organize, too, that way (at least
for me).  Keeping discs that are topically oriented and easy to "get my
hands on" makes it easier for me to remember what is stored where.  Call
me weird, but that's how I did it when I started using computers, and
while I haven't done things that way in a long time, it was nice, it was
simple, and I could definitely stand to go back to it.  :)

	--- Mike

-- 
My sigfile ran away and is on hiatus.
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