Packet Writing????

I knew better than to make a 3-foot-long post, but I did it anyway. Serves me right. I'm not bothering with the quotes and the pasting. It's just too much work, and I'm almost out of beer. Here we go :)

The Adaptec comment was made with the smiley face, as in "not to be taken seriously". Your claimed experience, however, is with DirectCD... Yes, the burner could be junk, the blanks too, the power in the building, maybe his biorythms are off too. If it was just him, I'd consider those things, but I've answered too many of the "hey my erasable doesn't read anymore" threads on boards like this to even bother. I'm pompous enough to believe if they (erasables)'ve let me down in the past, they'll fail for others too.

I wasn't trying to "burden" you. slipe believes he knows what the problem is, and his solution is the time-honored " 'Doctor, it hurts when I do this'. 'Then don't do that' ". I concur.

Including erasables? No, I'm telling him not to use them, remember?

"Hey, all I know is I haven't lost any..." Yes, so I've read. My brother runs stop signs all the time ("stop? nah, I've never been in a wreck"). I stop at them anyway.

slipe's contention of risk was in comparison to write-once, mastered discs. An infected system places a write-once disc in no danger whatsoever when it reads it. An erasable -- especially one written with packets -- is in an inherently more tenuous condition. Perhaps not more so than a hard drive, but "the subject here is ultimately about RW's themselves", right? Files on write-once multi-session discs are not in any danger from a virus. The worst that could possibly happen is the remaining capacity filled with garbage and the link to the previous session severed. The data is still intact, and uninfected. It might be a bit of an effort to recover it, but when recovered, it's undamaged.

Let's dispense with all the "ultimately, the user's responsible..." rhetoric. The fact is, with the notable exception of the fine collected minds of the membership of VDr, the majority of users are utter morons. You know it, I know it, and everyone at VDr knows it. Anyone who'd like to take a contrary position to that should be forewarned: My first response is "AOL has 30 million subscribers" :D Seriously, it isn't the user's fault if a power failure or Windows crash renders his erasable unreadable. Once in a while, they get so badly hosed they can't even be erased. Yes, write-once discs are vulnerable too, I know. But only while the "write-in-progress" light is on. What really scrambles a users mind is a dsic can be damaged when it's technically not being written to. At least if a write-once burn session fails, you know. There's no post-reboot surprises.

The UDF reader problems were offered solely as "nail-in-the-coffin" material for packets. Remember, this thread was originally basically "I want to try some erasables for packet-writing, but they're not working well, and some say packets suck. Should I packet-write?". It isn't necessarily a referendum on erasable vs. write-once, but I've seen enough user reported difficulty to advise against erasables for general use. They do have a role. I'm not advocating an outright ban.

I misread where you brought up the sparing overhead. I thought you were claiming the entire overhead for that, but that wasn't what you said. The actual amount, something on the order of 16MB or so if memory serves, isn't much though. The vast majority is still the sector markers.

And yes, in reality, it is the Virtual Table that's at risk. When I first brought that up, I used to say something like "effectively keeping the TOC in RAM", to avoid the boring technical details, but eventually it just became TOC. Sometimes I try not to go into too much technical detail. Maybe I shouldn't do that. The effect's the same, though. You can just about always go back to a previous session on a multi-session disc. A packet disc may not be recoverable.

Now I really AM out of beer :)

I have to vote for Packet Writing under the right circumstances. I have 2 desktops, each with a CDRW drive. I have found from experience that a CD-RW disc formated on machine A should never be written or erased by machine B. However, I constantly move files from machine A to machine B by first writing the files to the CD-RW disc, transporting the disk from machine A to B, and copying the files from the CD-RW to Machine B.

I later erase the CD-RW on Machine A, erase the original files on machine A and repeat the process. This has been a reliable procedure with no failures. This is cheaper than moving the files with a CDR and throwing it away later.

I also use CDR's extensively for permanent storage or backup of files that I wish to keep. I would agree with the comments regarding their higher reliability for this usage.

CD media are just tools used to accomplish a particular objective and the right tools, when used properly, make the process easier. It all depends on what your objective is.

"They say you can erase a RW a thousand times. That might be true, but you can write to one only about 20 times and it becomes unreliable."

You state that as fact. Is that from your own personal experience, or are you just keeping the flame?

Here is just one thread I happened to reply to recently: http://forums.techguy.org/showthread.php?threadid=90745 I have run across dozens like it and even more from people who lost data to packet writing. Interestingly, Alex was saying that he only got a month from his RWs on a board we posted on that has been defunct for two years – so he isn’t new to what he is doing.

Moving something to a CD-R has it's risks. Moving something from one folder to another on a HD has it's risks. Moving something to a floppy has it's risks.

You can’t MOVE something to a CDR unless you are packet writing to CDR with DirectCD. I don’t think any rational person erases the source until they have checked the recording. I would hope there isn’t anyone dumb enough to MOVE something to a floppy. “Send to” floppy is a copy command. Most people move folders on their hard drive, and I see no difference in reliability moving to another drive. One of the conveniences of packet writing is the ability to move stuff to the drive – I’m just saying that is a good way to lose data based on numerous posts.

RW's can be used for practice or test burns

I recommend that to people new to CD writing. It has nothing to do with packet writing, which is the subject of this thread. There is often no relationship between a software test burn and an actual burn, so doing the test to RW is a great idea. Once you get the hang of CD writing there is no reason to do a test burn in the first place – either with the software or RW. You have to check the recording anyway regardless of what medium and method you are using.

Cheap CD-R's aren't so cheap when you get them with rebates, and everybody and their Granny is sending you spam afterwards.

You are really reaching. Everyone has a “dump” address for such purposes, and I have never seen a rebate form with the e-mail address as a required field. I don’t think it would be legal to advertise a rebate and refuse to honor it because the person does not have an e-mail account. I have some left of a box of 200 that came with a full rebate, free shipping and a $10 new customer discount. I make a nickel every time I burn one. It really irritates me when they rebate the full price of the CDs but make me pay the sales tax – I mean free should be FREE!

Holy cow, what propaganda and scare tactics from the "packet writing sucks" crowd!?!

Since mine was the only post you could have been responding to I think that was completely inappropriate. In that post I said It is useful for someone who makes daily backups of a large amount of stuff or is set up to add or overwrite just data that has changed. and There are people who make good use of packet writing Then I gave reasons for what I thought were deficiencies in using it instead of mastering software. keeping the flame - scare tactics - propaganda Those are common statements from people without substance to their viewpoints. There is no conspiracy against packet writing. It just has limitations that need pointing out.

This is a representative thread of what is available in hard drives: http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/...eid=1029897604 You don’t even need 7200 RPM for storage. To keep stuff temporarily on multiple packet written RWs and have to sort through them to find what you are looking for is silly IMHO. Both Divergent Species transporting data between computers and Alex Ethridge’s large daily backups support my statement that There are people who make good use of packet writing. I just think it is a really poor substitute for an inexpensive second hard drive.

Everyone here seems to agree that multi session CDRs are the best way to store vital data you have otherwise erased. I would add packet writing to CDR with DirectCD to that list. If you don’t generate large amounts of data, packet writing to CDR uses only about half the housekeeping space per session and the data is as secure as writing it with mastering software. You also don’t have the long and space consuming format. I still wouldn’t MOVE my only copy of something.

At the risk of stiring up this hornets nest some more, let me chip in with some experiences in favour of packet writing to CD R/Ws.

I have been using such since 1999 and of the original discs (some Traxdata and some HP) have had only one failure so am considerable in excess of the "Use 20 times" comment. In fact my experience has been that they are about as reliable as diskettes. These disks have been used now in three CD writers without problems.

For permanent off-line storage however I advocate that, just as with diskettes, never trust your important data to just one disk.

I always used this as my bottom line... if it does what you want or need it to do, it is a good thing. If it doesn't... well, you get the picture.

Under different situations, you will have different results. The end result is based on the weakest link in your production of the CDs- whether it is the brand or type of CDR/RWs, the program used to create the CDs, or the writer, etc.

As for backing data up to CDRs or CDRs, the same rule applies as backing up to tape or any other medium - don't wait until a disaster occurs to test the validity of the data being backed up.

I certainly have to agree with mfutty – a packet written backup is about a million times better than none at all.

Many different views on my initial post. Thanks for all your knowldge and aspects. Interesting. I just started this packet writing option with only one disc and was succesful in removing and replacing files in the testing stage. I just wanted opinions and I sure got them I didn't think it would raise such a "sticky" situation between members. AS the old saying goes "if it aint broke don't fix it"
I will resume with my packet writing.
Seen some threads on Mount Rainier in the NG's. Will have to look into that also for future.
Thanks
Redhorse
PS Back on the the "top" again for a few minutes