Hi Folks! This weekend I plan to begin transferring all of the Poser materials I've stored on my hard drive and storage disks to my newly acquired PowerBook G3 laptop. I want to create a CD archive of all the free props and morphs I've downloaded over the years. My sales contact at MicroCenter suggested I buy "one-way" CDs rather than the CD-RW disks because the reusable ones only have a shelf life of 1-2 years before data loss sets in (?). Anyone else heard of this? How are the old CDs you've burned holding up? I'd appreciate any answers y'all have, because once I burn the disks I'm going to erase the duplicate files from my Jaz and Zip disks. Peter (Dr Zik)

I don't use CD-RW for my backups, too many problems. I save on CDR and with GHOST. And it allows me to restore only one file if it is necessary. Michel

thats a good tip! Is Ghost the brand name or do you mean a generic ghosting program? Thanks :)

Oh, does anyone know if the life for cdrw disks for consumer audio components (not computer audio) have the same problem?

I hesitate to answer :o) Humor or it is not , the problem of the translators. it is well the Norton Ghost Michel who regrets that his English is not better

I never use CDRW to back anything up that I plan to keep, I only use those to keep works in progress and then I back up on regular CDR when I'm done. I also use Ghost, it's an excellent program if you want to keep your settings on CD. Marque

I personally don't use CDRW. If it's something I plan on altering, I keep it on hard drive. If it's something I plan to never alter (like downloaded props, etc.), then it goes on CDR. Plus, the last time I price checked, CDRs were going for less than $1 each, while CDRWs were going for $20 each. The definite price advantage goes to CDR, even if you have to burn a new one for updates every once in a while.

I use CDR's with Adaptec Create CD with this you don't have to fill the whole 650megs in one session this way I may download 100mgs a week then at the end of the week transfer from my hard drive to disk until its full works great

CDR's can be had for around $.35 each and will last. I just put a file on my hard drive called poser and subdir's with texture,poses,characters,props etc in it. When it gets to a bit over 600megs write it to cd and delete the folders and start over again.

Michel... it's not you...it's me...I don't know about those ghosting programs so i wanted to make sure. Your english is fine! :)

I have adaptec on my computer (it came with it), so I will try that. But I still need to get a ghosting program for my change over to a new HD soon. Is there one anyone recommends for win2000, good for the technically challenged and can write directly to the CD? :)

It is not anything Bia, just that the English humor is not the same that ours and I don't know ever when it is serious or not. With Norton Ghost I make the files under DOS, of = / - 600 megas, but not on CD's I control the files under Windows and I put them after on CD :o)

Adaptec (Roxio) CD creator 5 can format both cdr and cdrw discs to udf format with compression. That way it will store alot more than just the 700mb of space that fits on aregular disc. Personally, if i could afford it i would go with only cd-rw because on the contrary to popular belief they have a life-span of 10 or more years. that is with the gold embedded records ofcourse... (no cd can last more then 10yrs without a loss of data so if i where you i would try to store them on vinyl or internet harddiscs since they are easily updated with no data loss.)

the color doesnt matter, its just dye. go with a cdr, cause then you wont accidentally erase it like you can with a cdrw

We have the C D wizard program installed on our computers and after learning the hard way ( Computer crashes, etc.), I now try to put most critical items on C D. However I use C D RW's, I find them fairly cheap at Wallmarts, but they are a brand name, then I use them in much the way I use to 3 1/2 floppies, I stick them in and add things until they are close to full. I hope they have a longer shelf life , then what was talked about above. The very most critical items of all ( now), I make 2 copies of on 2 seperate C D RW's, just in case, I have had some(cd-rw's) to fail on me. I am not part of the computer generation and would love some more info on CD-RW's, My Main Question is : am I wrong putting my trust in CD-RW's ??

if you wnat to storage files that you want to stay there forever, use Cdr. I use CDRW wit Adaptec direct cd, so i can write in the cdrw like the cdrw was a diskette or a hd.I use it to storage temp files, or files i am going to work with them after several weeks

I NOW use cd-rw along with cd-r's because I used to think I didn't need cd-rw's. I would wait for 650Mb of info to amass on my hard drive and then back up on cd-r. THEN, my hard drive failed...I lost EVERYTHING I had not backed up to that point (I didn't want to burn `til I reached 650Mb). When you have spent around 100 hours building your first 3D models and then lose them because you didn't use cd-rw's...you will instantly start wanting to use them. USE cd-rw's! If you are afraid they crap out after 2-3 years...then replace them, they can be bought for around $1.00 a piece now, so no excuse there. I have never had a problem with cd-rw's in any way (losing data). (I use a Yamaha drive & Roxio ez cd creator 5 platinum). I also FULLY erase them after a year, re-format them and stick the files back on, just in case the formatting has been comprised whatsoever. I also suggest using 2 backup's of the same info, never FULLY trust any computer-wise to NOT fail you. Do I sound paranoid yet? If it's data that won't change in content, use cd-r's, if it's ongoing work projects, use cd-rw's, otherwise you will want to wait for a full cd amount of info to burn and you will wait...and maybe lose everything.

CD-Rs are cheap enough too burn more than one copy of your backups, that way you have one to use and the other to save. Time is not what wears out the disk, it's using the disk, so have a backup for your backup. I actually have a CD-R with only michael and vicky on it. I had nothing else to back up at the time, but I was not about to risk losing a file I paid 40-60 dollars on, for the sake of a cheap CD-R disk. (I bought 50 disks for $8)

I wouldn't rely on any cd working all of the time. I have about 4 cdr's that failed on me with no other backup of the stuff on them. I am slowly trying to find everything to replace the disks that went bad. I don't trust any cd anymore!

Hi Folks! Thanx for all the advice. I'll probably continue to save to a Jaz disk until I reach 700MB (the new carbon CDR disks can hold that much--anybody using them?) and burn the files to a CDR. Peter (Dr Zik)

WHATEVER YOU DO, JUST BACKUP THOSE FILES. I had a major crash with two HDDs going bad, and one trying to take over the File Allocation Tables of another, trashing a week spent trying to recover files (And as I go through them, some of the recovered files may have to go). Powerquest's LOST AND FOUND is a fantastic program for recoveriing files lost (even on a format), but I'd rather backup than have to recover stuff again. I have a semi-permanent solution right now, but back 'em up!

Peter, it's hard to say anything about the real lifespan of CDRs and CDRWs right now - you hear claims between 1-2 years and a 100 years for CDRs, and most often something around 30 years. Nevertheless, I would prefer CDRs for backup, and CDRWs only for temporary "scratch backups", like raw scans, audio dumps, etc. etc. The density of the "writing" is much weaker on CDRW (that's why old CR players can't even read them), so I would expect a much shorter lifespan for them. But (and this is a big "but"), it is a known fact that the writing precision gets worse on the outside of discs, meaning that the chance to lose data gets bigger the more you write on them (all CDs are written inside->outside). Every test (I've ever seen) strongly recommended not to fill CDs up to the limit if it is supposed to be a precious backup, they typically recommended to use about 500 MB maximum, and to avoid the 700MB CDRs completely (for backups). On Mac you will probably use Toast, make sure to turn on one of the "optimise" options - this way the whole volume shrinks to its minimum size on CD. Without it, the blocks will be left where they are, and the CD will be filled "to the fringe" even if contains much less real data.

I have found CDRW to be unreliable and have lost data even after just one year. With blank CD's so cheap (I buy silver blanks for less than 20 cents each in bulk) I just Burn everything to CD as soon as I have a diskload. Then I use a utility for atuomatically cataloging my CDS in a database format so that I can instantly find any item. I probably have 500 CDs of data archived and have never lost anything. And it never takes more than a couple of minutes to find anything. Forget CDRW - save up for DVD-R