Just got a chance to borrow a dvd-ram drive from work so began backing up my 20 or 30 artwork cd's. Had almost forgot about making these. oh oh ,, its the floating spheres over refective water thing. 4.7gigs each, far from enough though, wish there was a media to put everything on a single cd, whatever that everthing might be.

Cool, Love the colors in the top one.

Cool images. I like the top one best. "wish there was a media to put everything on a single cd, whatever that everthing might be." There has been work on a blue-laser DVD that can hold 27GB.

The company "Matsushita", (also known as Panasonic) has came up with, and is further developing/perfecting a 100 Gigabyte DVD disk. But, I'm sure they will sell us the 27Gb disks for a few years before coming out with the 100Gb, just so they can sell us everything all over again, lol. AS

Whoa, great start, pmoores! I think you got a step further the "reflective sphere over water" thing... :) Guys, are you telling me that I've just bought a HD that in a short while will found room in a single shiny diskie? Gosh... :) S.

Short time is relative. I think we'll at least have to wait for 10 years before a 100GB DVD is standard and inexpensive. The 4.7GB DVD-burners still cost $400 and only after they will be cheap for about a year the 27GB disks will start to appear. That's how it went with CD's and DVD's anyway. And then the 27GB DVD's need to become the standard before the 100GB disks will appear. I think your harddisk will be bigger than your current new one before those 100GB DVD's will become standard.

I believe you may be exactly right, there Rayraz. AS

Oh, one thing, we have a small chain of these giant stores out here in Western USA called "Fry's". They have an online outlet of Fry's; http://www.outpost.com You can usually find a $250 DVD-Ram drive there. I bet by the end of the year one's under $200 might be common. (hopefully, I'd like to have one) AS

Thats the way i figure it, burrow the one from work for now.. and umm 7 or 8 dvd discs and in another year or so it will be cost effective to buy the burner for myself. I just dont like the jump though. 700 megs to 4.7gigs is definately nice but some of the artwork i make can fill a single cdr each. On a sidenote, im still transferring cdr's to harddrive for burn. A lot of old never finished bryce files there. Some quite funny, what was i thinking?

Rayraz, AgentSmith, there might be a problem with the drives. See the (still) current issue with various flavours of DVD burners. So, you might get a 100GB drive before 27Gb dirve standardises.

Yeah, I've been wondering/hoping the same. No one can agree on just ONE dvd format. I've read some info on the 100Gb that might help cut through that. But, we'll have to wait and see. One other thing was; Matsushita had found a way to make a 100Gb disk and drive with exsisting technology, meaning they wouldn't really have to upgrade their manufacturing plants, thus saving on overhead, and hopefully meaning a more inexpensive new technology when it does come out. (i.e. it won't cost $500 when it first comes out) Ah, technology and my impatience... AS

I wonder if I'd have enough things to fill a DVD? Probably not unless I started making uncompressed print resolution photos, animations, and ridiculously detailed 3D models. But still it's cool, more space is always a good thing. Now I wonder how long it would take to burn one of those. Considering that I still have to go with slower speeds to reliably burn a CD (which at 700 or so MB takes about an hour), the same must be true for the DVD... Which means, it would probably take a good couple of hours... Dunno about burning 'em on a regular basis, but would definitely make a good way of backing up a HD. Hmmm... 100GB DVD... ponders for a moment I wonder if they're doing something with multiple layers for data storage. And then perhaps changing the angle of the R/W lasers and taking advantage of refraction in a material... My guess - since I'm no optics engineer. That seems like it would work with minor modification to existing DVD system components. Speaking of drivespace, I wonder how much GB Renderosity has. It must be a pretty big number considering the amount of images they host. It would make an interesting site statistic for the curious.

My Bryce projects folder (scene files) is around 6Gb, that doesn't include my saved .mat, .obp, .sky files. It takes you an hour to burn a 700mb cd? Must be a much older burner...mine takes about 5-6 minutes. 100Gb DVD's; Basically, what they are doing is finding a way to make the information pits in the CD closer together and still be readable. Most of the time they end up having to use a totally different kind of laser to make it work. Then it just comes down to stability. I've seen the 27Gb disks, they never come out of the "jewel box". Sorta like a big 27Gb floppy disk. No more fingerprints and scratches. And, most are using 4 layers (two on each side) You would think as a Mod I would know how big Renderosity's server space is. I don't. Secret I guess. AgentSmith

Sony has a dvd drive that supports all of the different dvd types as well as burning cds. Was going to buy it to replace my dead cd burner but it was out of stock.