Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!van-bc!mdavcr!ewm
From: ewm@mdavcr.UUCP (Eric W. Mitchel)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: WORM drives (was: Eraseable Optical Drives)
Message-ID: <895@mdavcr.UUCP>
Date: 17 Jul 90 23:17:19 GMT
References: <1990Jul17.043311.20221@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1990Jul17.061409.23165@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: MacDonald Dettwiler, 13800 Commerce Parkway, Richmond, BC, Canada  V6V 2J3
Lines: 38

In article <1990Jul17.061409.23165@Neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.stanford.edu writes:
>I heard somewhere that a European company was working on an erasable OD
>that would also be able to play CD ROMs (and presumably music CDs). This
>sounds like something worth waiting for. Does anyone have information on
>this?

Well, this isn't quite the issue, but your comment brought up a tidbit
that I have heard recently:

I have heard that Yamaha has been working on a WORM drive that writes on
standard CDROM platters.  These can then be read in normal CDROM
read-only drives.  They have been talking about release this year.

This is significant, because CDROM platters are very cheap (~$5 @), have
enormous storage capacity (can you say Gigabyte), and their format is
STANDARDIZED.  There is not yet an industry standard format for R/W or
WORM optical drives, so you are currently taking a chance that whatever
vendor you buy from will continue to support your current format.

If you are using the optical drive for long term (years?) 
incremental backups, it is a big risk to use a proprietary storage
format.

Of course this applies to tapes and other media as well.  


An added benefit:

The bit half life on WORM drives is measured in at least decades,
where that of tapes is often less than 5 years (or even less than 1 year
on some reel systems).  Unless you refresh your tapes annually, you may
well have a great mass of nothing on those shelves.


Eric

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Disclaimer:  I make no promises.  Hell, I'm wrong all the time.  I also lie.