The end of the Hard Disks

[free_electron]

one more thing to carry, can't find when needed , broken when needed ... and how much longer will that be around ?

Given that USB floppy drives are still available, LONG after becoming obsolete, I expect that USB optical drives will be available for quite some time yet. It’s likely that they’ll stop making DVD drives (much the way we don’t make CD-only data drives any more), so probably they’ll just be $50 blu-ray drives with DVD and CD backward-compatibility.

I prefer the external drives: why schlep an internal drive with me everywhere for the 1 time in two years I might need it? It’s added weight, and would represent the only mechanical component in the machine other than the CPU fan.

when's the last time you actually used an optical disc ? a dvd can hold barely 5Gbyte. a CD 0.6. That tiny micro-sd card can hold 50x more. ( or even much more these days)

I think the optical drives will disappear soon.  (apart from blu-ray players maybe)
The recordable cd / dvd is a medium without use in computers"
- A modern Os installer doesn't even fit on a DVD anymore
- writing is slow, even with fast drives
- easily damaged
- degrades in sunlight (you can't leave it on your desk)
- large
- little storage space for what it is
- risk of making coasters.

in the year 2000 you could walk into a compusa and there were whole rows of shelves with 50 or more different writers and drives. now ? go to a computer store and they have .. one model
I bought the HP-100 dvd-rw drive when it first came out and had the free upgrade to the 200 model when they discovered it could not be upgraded to do +rw

The only reason i keep one around (not even a blu-ray , just a simple cd/dvd writer) is so i can burn recovery images for some test equipment that does not have usb ports. and it sits in a n old computer running windows xp that drives dome other archaic stuff.

[free_electron]

During my stint as a computer technician, I learned something about users: they tend to fall into one of two groups, those who are really gentle on their gadgets, and those who are really hard on them. Sounds to me like you fall more into the latter group!

i'm typically in the middle. a usb stick is hanging of my keychain with my carkeys
reasons i've lost some
- the little cord snaps
- the key case is made from plastic and the attachment point for the cord is very weak (i'm looking at you HP and PNY and Lexar...)
- the entire drive falls out of the swivel cover
especially this kind of drive :
- many of the "key" style drives have the usb contacts exposed. i've had two die , probably because of ESD. i've had one fry a usb port because it made a big short when inserted. the computer actually rebooted.
these :
- i had a kingston Datatraveler. last time i neede it the guts were left behind in the last machine i plugged it in. all that was remaining was the empty shell ...

- and lets not forget the style where the cord attaches to .. the cap... so all that remains is the cap dangling from the keychain... the drive is gone.

other irritations:
- you lose the little endcap
- it has a usb-c when you need a usb-b or micro usb (for phone) or lightning and vice versa (no i don not want to carry an adapter. it's another thing to lose)
- some are wider than a usb to usb spacing so they interfere with adjacent ports.

i now use the samsung "bar" style. those have a solid metal construction with an eyelet that will not break and you can put an actual metal split ring through it so the damn thing stays put on my keychain. so far the guts have not fallen out.

[Mechatrommer]

That makes literally no sense. The laser isn’t sitting there turned on all day long: it turns on when closing the drive tray triggers it to check for a disc. And in fact, it’s not one laser: in a DVD drive, there is one IR laser for reading/burning CDs, and a red one for DVDs. (In a blu-ray drive, there’s a third blue laser.) Only one laser is ever on at one time, and it’s off when idle.

the drive is cranking every boot time remember?

As haenk said, a far more likely explanation for drive degradation is dust ingestion, which is not related to whether it’s powered up. An external drive won’t suffer that problem.

as i said i have more broken dvd drive here. when tried to repair, no dust inside, they turned on as usual, but cannot read any data. if its just a matter of dust or hazy glass, i should be able to fix them easily. my guess is those drives they sell are consumer grade and they doom to fail within 5 years of usage (turned on with PC even 99% idle)

[james_s]

when's the last time you actually used an optical disc ? a dvd can hold barely 5Gbyte. a CD 0.6. That tiny micro-sd card can hold 50x more. ( or even much more these days)

A few days ago, I backed up some of my project files on a CD. I burn CDs to play in one of my cars that has a CD player, modern head units look silly in 40+ year old cars. I make boot CDs to install Linux distros and as rescue discs. A huge majority of my hardware and software projects (KiCAD, FPGA, Python, C) can fit on a CD, a single DVD can back up almost all of the critical stuff I care about and I end up with multiple copies archived. The really big stuff like my media collection gets backed up on hard drives but most of that is replaceable. Optical drives will go away eventually but lots of people still use them, even if you don't.

[Zenith]

when's the last time you actually used an optical disc ? a dvd can hold barely 5Gbyte. a CD 0.6. That tiny micro-sd card can hold 50x more. ( or even much more these days)

A few days ago, I backed up some of my project files on a CD. I burn CDs to play in one of my cars that has a CD player, modern head units look silly in 40+ year old cars. I make boot CDs to install Linux distros and as rescue discs. A huge majority of my hardware and software projects (KiCAD, FPGA, Python, C) can fit on a CD, a single DVD can back up almost all of the critical stuff I care about and I end up with multiple copies archived. The really big stuff like my media collection gets backed up on hard drives but most of that is replaceable. Optical drives will go away eventually but lots of people still use them, even if you don't.

There's a lot of material available on optical discs, films and music. Some of it's very cheap second hand. If you have a PC you use for entertainment, a DVD drive is pretty much essential.

[Mechatrommer]

I think the optical drives will disappear soon.  (apart from blu-ray players maybe)
The recordable cd / dvd is a medium without use in computers"
- A modern Os installer doesn't even fit on a DVD anymore
- writing is slow, even with fast drives
- easily damaged
- degrades in sunlight (you can't leave it on your desk)
- large
- little storage space for what it is
- risk of making coasters.

cd/dvdr data retention is 20-30 years (100 years life expectancy), hdd is 5-10 years, ssd is 0.25-1 year atm... if dvdr drive is gone, that archival capability will be missed. currently double layer dvdr is 8.5GB the last time i checked. btw archiving job is not for the "latter" type of guy who toss around their dvds or put them under the sun.

[james_s]

There's a lot of material available on optical discs, films and music. Some of it's very cheap second hand. If you have a PC you use for entertainment, a DVD drive is pretty much essential.

I still typically buy music on CDs, then I immediately rip them onto my streaming server and pack the original CD away. I like having a physical copy of the media I buy.

[tooki]

when's the last time you actually used an optical disc ? a dvd can hold barely 5Gbyte. a CD 0.6. That tiny micro-sd card can hold 50x more. ( or even much more these days)

It’s been years since I wrote a data disc — but then again, I almost never did that even back in the day. (Back then, Mac users were much more likely than PC users to use external hard disks, thanks to high-speed external interfaces, namely SCSI and then FireWire. So I rarely had the need to burn any data but things like a copy of an OS installer disc.) Most of the discs I’ve burned over the years were audio CD “mixtapes”  for the car.

On the other hand, I still buy music mostly on CD (which paradoxically is often cheaper than downloads) and rip it. I also used to do that with DVDs, though I never bothered getting a Blu-ray drive.

That makes literally no sense. The laser isn’t sitting there turned on all day long: it turns on when closing the drive tray triggers it to check for a disc. And in fact, it’s not one laser: in a DVD drive, there is one IR laser for reading/burning CDs, and a red one for DVDs. (In a blu-ray drive, there’s a third blue laser.) Only one laser is ever on at one time, and it’s off when idle.

the drive is cranking every boot time remember?

Which is literally 2 seconds maximum. Even cumulatively, it simply does not matter. Even if a computer did that 10 times a day for 10 years, that’s 10 hours of use, so the same as watching a half dozen feature films (a common use for a DVD drive). Completely negligible.

[Mechatrommer]

thats the "theory"

[free_electron]

hmm. i guess i'm weird.
I didn't realize people still even bought media on disks. the little music i buy is from apple. maybe one or two songs a year. i'm not big on music or films. I bought maybe 20 movies on "disc" in my lifetime. now it's on amazon. and even that is like 5 movies a year. If i can't stream it i don't want to watch it. And i'm not subscribing to 25 streaming services. Between netflix  , amazon and cbs , that's it. No disney, apple tv or anything else. i hate blu-ray. i've bought at least 4 players, that invariable became unsupported, needed endless updates to play a disc i had just bought. There is nothing more frustrating and mood-killing than coming home, planning a nice movie night and then first need to muck around for 3 hours jumping through hoops to update the player firmware because "it's not compatible with the new disc" you just brought home.

As for burning stuff to cd/dvd .. i store copies on a distributed NAS accessible from all machines in the house. It has plenty of storage and can hold 4 drives. if i run out : time to upgrade one of the drives. last time that happened was 2.5 years ago. i still have a slot free and i know the nas supports up to 16Tb drives per slot. (4 slots) i'm not going to run out. Currently loaded with 4TB drives so plenty of room to grow.
i also make it a point not to store anything on the local machines (except when traveling, but my laptop has two physical drives and i carry a USB harddisk for another copy as well) . my files reside on the nas , quadruplicated (two copies per nas and copies between nas) and versioned (like apple time machine). critical stuff has a cloud backup as well.

like i said , i keep one cd/dvd burner around so i can write a recovery disc for test equipment like infiniium scopes , logic analysers etc. those can install from cd. i wonder if anyone has ever made a box that converts a usb memory stick to ide ... or can emulate a cd player... like those floppy emulators with usb... gotta look for that...

i'm weird like that...

[tooki]

thats the "theory"

The math adds up, you can try it yourself.

What isn’t represented is usage-independent aging, and on the contrary, the advantages of running the motors now and then so they don’t seize up.

[Zenith]

Not weird, just different. I have a large collection of CDs played through a CD player - you can still buy them new. I'm not much into new trends in hifi, streaming services and all the rest of it. I suppose I could investigate a proper computer based hifi system and commit all the CDs to disc, but it hardly seems worth the trouble.

I like old films and TV series. I've been given a few boxed sets and picked up another lot through ebay or looking through charity shops (thrift stores), or picked them up at car boot sales. I particularly like black and white films. I haven't had a TV for 25 years. When I see TV at friends' places all I see is irritating rubbish. Apparently that's considered weird.

As for data storage and computer use, I don't use optical media much for that these days, but a few times over the last five years, I've been glad I've had a PC with a DVD drive.

[David Hess]

Leaving the drive powered, or for only reading, will have no affect on the laser diode operating life.

What does matter is optical power during writes because the diodes operate at close to their maximum rating.  Since the wear is some power function of the power, operating life, and the number of burned disks, can be considerably extended by only burning at the slowest speed where optical power is lower.

[free_electron]

Not weird, just different. I have a large collection of CDs played through a CD player - you can still buy them new. I'm not much into new trends in hifi, streaming services and all the rest of it. I suppose I could investigate a proper computer based hifi system and commit all the CDs to disc, but it hardly seems worth the trouble.

I like old films and TV series. I've been given a few boxed sets and picked up another lot through ebay or looking through charity shops (thrift stores), or picked them up at car boot sales. I particularly like black and white films. I haven't had a TV for 25 years. When I see TV at friends' places all I see is irritating rubbish. Apparently that's considered weird.

As for data storage and computer use, I don't use optical media much for that these days, but a few times over the last five years, I've been glad I've had a PC with a DVD drive.

I have a pure digital playlist of music. Most of it is not available on cd's except through ebay , used. Pretty hard to find a Joe Dassin cd here in the US ... Or Urbanus (flemisch comedian). But they are on apple music and the rest are digitized from my old CD collection. I still have the discs somewhere in a storage box, but they are converted to apple lossless and stored in itunes.
Most of my day to day music is through youtube, custom mixes like Staysee, or indie music like pomplamoose. i got some playlists there , or from the phone , but i prefer quiet when working. Car streams. it doesn't have an old school radio/tape/cd anymore. Only a huge touchscreen and streaming 

Between amazon prime and netflix and cbs (for star trek) i got all i need. I ditched the few blu ray discs and dvd's i had and bought them as digital. i'm done with all those crap players with their stupid drm and updates. i got so mad the last time . The player needed 4 updates and then it told me the disc was too new to be able to play. I would have to had buy a new player. For the 5 times a year a play a disc ? I Widlarized the player out of frustration. I Don't take crap like that anymore. I Wanted a nice movie night and ended up with hours of download install and then still couldn't play the disc ( the hobbit). Sony Blu-ray player.

[Circlotron]

operating life [of the laser], and the number of burned disks, can be considerably extended by only burning at the slowest speed where optical power is lower.

I didn’t know that! Good tip. Thanks. 

[Mechatrommer]

thats the "theory"

The math adds up, you can try it yourself.

What isn’t represented is usage-independent aging, and on the contrary, the advantages of running the motors now and then so they don’t seize up.

'theory' of simple math adding minutes and hours is not the same as empirical result of whats piling in my store.. you havent take into account current that goes into the laser or candela measurement which i dont claim to know but a probable factors.. as said, the reason i keep them is because i can one day reuse their parts such as motor mechanism etc which are still perfectly fine. In fact all mechanical and physical aspects of them, including laser+motor assembly are visually perfectly fine.. they just dont read for unknown reason.

operating life [of the laser], and the number of burned disks, can be considerably extended by only burning at the slowest speed where optical power is lower.

I didn’t know that! Good tip. Thanks. 

which what i usually did on those damaged dvdrw drives because i have the impression slower write give less risk of corrupted data, but then they died quickly anyway..

[james_s]

hmm. i guess i'm weird.
I didn't realize people still even bought media on disks. the little music i buy is from apple. maybe one or two songs a year. i'm not big on music or films. I bought maybe 20 movies on "disc" in my lifetime. now it's on amazon. and even that is like 5 movies a year. If i can't stream it i don't want to watch it. And i'm not subscribing to 25 streaming services. Between netflix  , amazon and cbs , that's it. No disney, apple tv or anything else. i hate blu-ray. i've bought at least 4 players, that invariable became unsupported, needed endless updates to play a disc i had just bought. There is nothing more frustrating and mood-killing than coming home, planning a nice movie night and then first need to muck around for 3 hours jumping through hoops to update the player firmware because "it's not compatible with the new disc" you just brought home.

The numbers steadily decreased for years but there was a slight uptick recently and over 46 million CDs are sold each year and that is I believe just the new ones so physical media is still very much alive if overshadowed by newer tech. I have a very old bluray player and I have never encountered even one movie that wouldn't play in it, I don't even know if the firmware can be updated, certainly I have never tried, that is a completely foreign experience to me, I don't even know what would result in that happening. I have hundreds of DVDs, blurays and CDs, and I buy more regularly, almost always used ones that cost peanuts.

I tried streaming for a while, I had Netflix and Amazon but I eventually dumped both of them because they kept losing content I wanted to watch so I set up a Plex server and have been running that for several years now. It works just like Netflix except the interface is much nicer and the content is all stuff that I want and never changes unless I change it. It runs on a tiny little i7 mini PC that lives in a closet, I rarely even have to think about it, it just works.

[james_s]

Leaving the drive powered, or for only reading, will have no affect on the laser diode operating life.

What does matter is optical power during writes because the diodes operate at close to their maximum rating.  Since the wear is some power function of the power, operating life, and the number of burned disks, can be considerably extended by only burning at the slowest speed where optical power is lower.

The laser diodes do wear, but usually when an optical drive has problems it's because the optics in the pickup get dirty. They are not sealed and contaminates in the air find their way in there. Look at all that dust inside an old desktop computer, some of that same dust gets into the optical drive. I've seen them fouled by cooking oil vapor in the air and coolant vapor in my friends machine shop was a constant hassle with optical drives, you don't see it in the air most of the time but it leaves a sticky film all over everything in the shop eventually.

[David Hess]

The laser diodes do wear, but usually when an optical drive has problems it's because the optics in the pickup get dirty. They are not sealed and contaminates in the air find their way in there. Look at all that dust inside an old desktop computer, some of that same dust gets into the optical drive. I've seen them fouled by cooking oil vapor in the air and coolant vapor in my friends machine shop was a constant hassle with optical drives, you don't see it in the air most of the time but it leaves a sticky film all over everything in the shop eventually.

I learned that negative case pressure draws dust and contaminates into the drives lesson long ago.  Since then I have designed all of my systems to operate with positive pressure and an intake filter.

[madires]

Looks like HDDs are greener than SSDs:
The Dirty Carbon Secret Behind Solid State Memory Drives (https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives)

[SiliconWizard]

Looks like HDDs are greener than SSDs:
The Dirty Carbon Secret Behind Solid State Memory Drives (https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/the-dirty-carbon-secret-behind-solid-state-memory-drives)

That's an interesting take.

[Kevin.D]

 I still use a blue ray optical drive for safe archival of important docs/data/photos etc , I use those M disks (available up to 28 Gig capacity) which are good for  1000 years
apparently (not sure how they arrived at that figure) but I do know they will certainly outlast standard dvd , hdd or ssd drive archived material.

[Kjelt]

(not sure how they arrived at that figure)

Elevated lifetime tests, so extreme temperatures, uv light and humidity and then calculating # errors over time.
Then calculating back to the normal storage conditions they can make an statistical estimation.

[David Hess]

When I built my new workstation last year, I included M-DISC compatible DVD and Blu-Ray burners, but I have not put them to use yet because I need to upgrade my burner software.  When I backup to disk, I use PAR2 files for error recovery.

So far I keep an offline backup of critical files on a pair of external USB SATA SSDs which are regularly checked using hashes to force scrubbing.

[Halcyon]

I still use a blue ray optical drive for safe archival of important docs/data/photos etc , I use those M disks (available up to 28 Gig capacity) which are good for  1000 years
apparently (not sure how they arrived at that figure) but I do know they will certainly outlast standard dvd , hdd or ssd drive archived material.

Be really careful with optical media for long-term storage. In a place I used to work, we would have old archives, first on CD, then DVD and eventually Bluray. I experienced problems which ranged from discs being rendered totally unreadable, to certain sectors being unreadable (which is no good for archive files unless there is redundancy built-into the file). And we're talking disks that ranged from 10 to only a few years old.

It was a standard office-type set up, but after hours, the air conditioning would shut off. I'm not sure whether that contributed significantly to the humidity and therefore accelerated the damage to the discs or not?

The moral of the story is test and rotate your backups often.