Grex Hardware Conference

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Grex Hardware Item 105: CD-Recordable
Entered by mwarner on Thu Feb 22 00:15:35 UTC 1996:

Any interest or experience in CD-recordable?

  I've been looking at means of storing and using a great quantity of
archived material.  CD's seem tempting because of durability, low cost
(for blanks), high portability and high capacity per disk.

  On the down side, recording cd's is not a simple as dumping material
onto a hard drive, even granting that you know exactly how you want to
organize archived material and won't need to frequently revise the
organization.  

  Price comparison with a different type of inexpensive storage system? 
Iomega Jaz drives with 1 Meg removable medium sell for around $600 with
$99 each for disks.  That's $1600 for 10G of swapable storage.  Although 
CD-R drives are 2-3 times as expensive, disks are only $7-$8 per 640 Meg
unit. At those prices for storage, the cost lines cross at a pronounced
angle.

  But...prices are said to be headed down for Iomega style disks, which
may soon reduce the 10-1 price ratio.  And...will the new format for CD's
drive down prices on current CD recording/reading hardware, or simply make
it obsolete in a year or two when everyone will be using 18 Gig double
sided /double layered super CDs?

7 responses total.

#1 of 7 by ajax on Thu Feb 22 07:45:35 1996:

  A number of CD-R drives are a bit under $1000 now, so they are pretty
price competetive with Jazz drives.  But if you're thinking you'll need
around 10 gigs total, I think I might prefer the Jazz for ease of use.
I'm not sure about all CD-R drives, but the couple I've seen required special
software with which to write data, while a Jazz drive is mounted just like a
regular disk.
 
  Throughput is another factor.  I'd think Jazz would be faster at 
reading and writing, but it's worth double-checking.  If you're going
to be rereading data a lot, the seek times and read throughput could
be pretty important.

  In CD-R's favor, you can read the disks on almost any CD-ROM drive
(unless you have a non-multisession CD drive and write a multi-session
disk), which provides good data portability.  Plus, with at least some
of the drives, you can "back up" your audio CDs.  It would be nice to
mix your own albums using lossless digital data transfer!

#2 of 7 by mwarner on Thu Feb 22 23:58:25 1996:

 Many drives come with "Video Toast"(software), although a couple feature
"drag and drop" type interface.  The interface is always more complicated
because of the nature of CD's.  Another factor is that you need a 1G drive
as fast as 11ms access *other than your internal drive*. I have a fairly
open ended need for archive space.  10G is just an estimate for one of
several facets of my work. (then I might prefer a 2nd copy, also). 

  I'm not clear on throughput.  I know access time is slower on a CD but
I'm not sure what the difference would be in loading a 600k Pict file (for
example) between CD and magnetic removable.

#3 of 7 by ajax on Sat Feb 24 08:46:41 1996:

  I was browsing a MacMall catalog today, and all the removable
drive options (CD-R, Jazz, etc.) proclaimed that they were the
speedy answer to your storage needs, fast fast fast, some were
2x and 4x as fast as normal, but none of them gave any actual
measurement of how fast they were!
 
  Another option that looked kinda interesting was a 4.6gig
optical for around $1600, and maybe $100 per disk.  And its
speed, as you might guess, was listed as "fast!"

#4 of 7 by mwarner on Sat Feb 24 18:03:20 1996:

Catalogs leave a lot to be desired as fine literature or technical expose(')s.

A 2X CD is 300kps and 4X is 600kps, etc.  I think many other drives, such
as optical drives, promise 1000-3000kps.  But I think there are other
factors affecting how fast a 600k file will appear on the screen, and am
not sure how much waiting is really due to transfer rate.  The difference
between seek time + transfer is from ca. 1/4 second to 2 seconds.  That
difference *alone* doesn't add up to much and maybe nothing, depending on
what else the software/processor is up to.  I dunno.

#5 of 7 by ajax on Mon Mar 4 02:27:17 1996:

Does the "2x=300kbps" equation hold for writing CDs as well as reading
them?  I was aware of that measurement for CD-ROM, but didn't know if 
it held for CD-R writing the same way.

#6 of 7 by srw on Mon Mar 4 07:41:02 1996:

I sincerely doubt it. I rather expect CD-R writing to be a very slow process,
but I don't know for certain.

#7 of 7 by mwarner on Tue Mar 5 04:06:34 1996:

From what little reading I've been doing, I gather that most (every one
I've seen in current catalogs) CD-R's write at 2X speed. Or at least the
desktop units.  30+ minutes for a 640 mb disk.  One unit (can't remember
the brand offhand; about $2000) offers a standalone capability:  You
compose your material on a 1 G hard drive bundled with the CD-R. The
CD-recorder controls the writing, freeing your computer during the write
and avoiding certain other pitfalls.  Slow or fragmented drives and/or
extensions & other background business are hazards to a clean write.

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