Comments on: How To Move Data Off CDs And DVDs In The Most Convenient Way

By: Daver

Daver — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:11:49 +0000

Moving data off Dvd/Cd on to Sd cards maybe a little more robust, longer lived (more resistant to bit rot), compact solution, but it is still a physical library with its attendant short comings. An index has to be created & maintained, cards have to be labeled, filed in a physical storage system ( wallet ect), taken out & returned. If you have a family then managing this library can be a challenge! (kids lose dvd’s put them in the wrong boxes nintendo game cards where even more fun so could sd cards !) Rather than just sd cards, would not the use of cheaper external hard drives be an intersting complimentary alternative? Easier Digital indexing, easy to back up locally & offsite, placed on home network or even your own cloud & the kids can’t physically lose it!

By: dtrmnd

dtrmnd — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 04:58:00 +0000

I love flash drives. I can carry lots of my favorite utilities with me on field calls instead of lugging a huge CD binder. The one thing I would add is that anything on a flash drive that you can’t afford to lose should also be on an old fashioned drive someplace. When a flash drive fails, they tend to give no warning and the data on them is usually beyond help.

By: castingcouch

castingcouch — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 03:25:00 +0000

Agreed. I also have 100s of cds and dvds from the past 17 years. It would take weeks to transfer it all. And the cost. I can buy 50 or 100 blank discs for next to nothing, while a bunch of flash memory would cost a whole lot more.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:43:00 +0000

The only advice I can give here is to look around you. Or to be more specific, look at what’s for sale on store shelves concerning computers. The laptops and netbooks far outweigh what’s on the shelves compared to traditional PCs, and of course there’s the tablet. While many laptops/netbooks have no optical drive and tablets absolutely have no optical drive, they all do have card slots. I know of no new laptop or netbook that doesn’t have a card slot. Many tablets have card slots. Many smartphones either have a slot or “lay-down flap” method of using memory cards. Digital cameras and camcorders almost all have card slots.

What you can take from this is that there are literally many thousands of devices that have a card slot but no optical drive interface to speak of, so I can assure you that the tech won’t be doing obsolete at any time soon. The optical drive however, given the fact it’s being seen less and less in newer devices, is on the way to being obsolete at a frighteningly fast rate.

Said another way: You’ll still be able to buy new devices to read your memory cards 10 years from now, and of that I have no doubt whatsoever. I can’t say that for optical however.

By: Luis R

Luis R — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 02:11:00 +0000

My only worry with memory cards is obsolesence. Optical drives have been around for a few decades already and are still around. In the same period of time we have been through several generations of formats incompatible among each other and the older ones are no longer around with only Compact Flash, SD and Memory Stick still going. My 10-year old CDs with pictures are still readable without errors. I have about 150 GB worth of pictures stored on optical disks plus about the same amount split between my hard drive and an external drive which are good candidates for storage in memory cards.

By: Rich

Rich — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:48:00 +0000

You basically have the exact same problem that many corporations do, where they have several thousands of tape backups which would take at least a solid year to transfer over. Someone would have to be hired full-time just to do the job. The only advantage is that tape can last 30 years, so they have the luxury of time. Optical discs on the other hand can start having the aluminum separate from the plastic (3 years for cheap brand, 7-10 years for good brand). In 10 years your discs may all be completely unreadable because of bubble formations; you’ll see the first signs of this on the disc edge. Even if you store the discs in a proper environment, it will happen. You can wait if you wish and that’s your decision, but I wouldn’t wait 10 years.

By: archer9234

archer9234 — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 20:38:00 +0000

This works only if you don’t have hundreds of dvd discs to move over. Which makes this moot. I have at least 1TB of burnt discs. Way too much money for cards. Gotta wait another 10 years to do this.