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Magento-optical disks/drives
- Thread starter Mk.558
- Start date
zuiko21
Well-known member
My experience with MO disks was great -- well worth the effort!
Purchased my first MO drive in 1996 (640 MB 3.5", compatible with 230 MB cartridges among others). After a couple of years, this unit became somewhat unreliable (but still usable!) so I purchased another one, Fujitsu branded -- working great last night.
MO media is absolutely reliable -- my first disks from 1996 have worn labels with almost unreadable lettering... but the contents read just fine, like day 1! The only problems I ever had were from the ocassional SCSI-termination issue, drive failure and an unfortunate system crash xx( that's why I keep the disks locked unless I need to write to them!
I mostly have backups on them, but also "large" (by the stantards of the day) files, like QT movies and big scans -- plus experimental / emergency systems. Most of my content is in DiskCopy images with checksum, so I can always verify data integrity
I like using the drive: compact, quiet and snappy performance -- seek times are slower than a HD, but still a lot faster than CDs. Another great thing is the plug-and-play feature: in the SE/30 or other computers without any driver installed, I just put a formatted disk in the drive, wait a few seconds for it to spin up, and then turn on the Mac -- driver from the disk is loaded at once. In fact, I'd like to get an OS X-compatible USB (or FireWire!) drive, it would make a convenient bridge between my modern and vintage computers.
Anyway, for your backup needs, I'd recommend a couple of HDs -- I'd never trust a single copy! (unless it's on MO, of course)
BTW, I'm currently in an altruist task as Sound Engineer wannabe, and I'm recording on... MiniDisc.
Purchased my first MO drive in 1996 (640 MB 3.5", compatible with 230 MB cartridges among others). After a couple of years, this unit became somewhat unreliable (but still usable!) so I purchased another one, Fujitsu branded -- working great last night.
MO media is absolutely reliable -- my first disks from 1996 have worn labels with almost unreadable lettering... but the contents read just fine, like day 1! The only problems I ever had were from the ocassional SCSI-termination issue, drive failure and an unfortunate system crash xx( that's why I keep the disks locked unless I need to write to them!
I mostly have backups on them, but also "large" (by the stantards of the day) files, like QT movies and big scans -- plus experimental / emergency systems. Most of my content is in DiskCopy images with checksum, so I can always verify data integrity
I like using the drive: compact, quiet and snappy performance -- seek times are slower than a HD, but still a lot faster than CDs. Another great thing is the plug-and-play feature: in the SE/30 or other computers without any driver installed, I just put a formatted disk in the drive, wait a few seconds for it to spin up, and then turn on the Mac -- driver from the disk is loaded at once. In fact, I'd like to get an OS X-compatible USB (or FireWire!) drive, it would make a convenient bridge between my modern and vintage computers.
Anyway, for your backup needs, I'd recommend a couple of HDs -- I'd never trust a single copy! (unless it's on MO, of course)
BTW, I'm currently in an altruist task as Sound Engineer wannabe, and I'm recording on... MiniDisc.
techknight
Well-known member
I tell you whats fun to backup, which is still an ongoing process, is the ZFS pool on the freenas server I have setup. its a 32bit system and ZFS keeps crashing and is shit-unstable on a 32bit system. Really designed for 64 as i was reading around.
There is almost 7tb of data stored on that server alone, plus I have a couple more 2TB drives i want to add to RAID along with replacing the motherboard/CPU/RAM so i have been in the process of backing all that data up. NOT FUN...
as far as the data is concerned, its a huge mixture of stuff, for example mostly backup copies of all our discs, and every time we get a machine in for setup/repair, I rip the restore images off the system and toss em up on the storage array for safekeeping. Then theres music and movie libraries. software libraries, list goes on and on. not to mention backups of other peoples backups during repair jobs, etc... Most of that can be flushed though as thats probably about 2TB alone.
We just parted out and tossed a Dell/EMC AX150N iSCSI SAN storage array because where we got it, we had to wipe the hard disk drives for data security before we could get it.
So, I did that and well that was dumb. I didnt realize that one of hte drives contained the system configuration and boot image. Once i wiped that, it became a very expensive paperweight and there was nothing EMC/Dell could do. lovely. So i pulled out all 12 250GB sata drives and used them elsewhere.
There is almost 7tb of data stored on that server alone, plus I have a couple more 2TB drives i want to add to RAID along with replacing the motherboard/CPU/RAM so i have been in the process of backing all that data up. NOT FUN...
as far as the data is concerned, its a huge mixture of stuff, for example mostly backup copies of all our discs, and every time we get a machine in for setup/repair, I rip the restore images off the system and toss em up on the storage array for safekeeping. Then theres music and movie libraries. software libraries, list goes on and on. not to mention backups of other peoples backups during repair jobs, etc... Most of that can be flushed though as thats probably about 2TB alone.
We just parted out and tossed a Dell/EMC AX150N iSCSI SAN storage array because where we got it, we had to wipe the hard disk drives for data security before we could get it.
So, I did that and well that was dumb. I didnt realize that one of hte drives contained the system configuration and boot image. Once i wiped that, it became a very expensive paperweight and there was nothing EMC/Dell could do. lovely. So i pulled out all 12 250GB sata drives and used them elsewhere.
Mk.558
Well-known member
Well, what I am thinking at the moment is that the best backup is a file that doesn't exist.
I don't do computer boot images, if I need a emergency boot disk set aside then a separate external HDD would be just fine.
Let's see here:
Free space on 250GB FAT32 volume: 77.53GB. If I put copies of OS X install DVDs, which would be nice since I have no confidence in Apple's future plans to maintain machine-specific 10.4.6 install disks for this machine, I'd best do it myself. Or 10.5 disks, but those should be around for awhile.
I'm thinking a stack of 15 MO disks should cover me just fine. Some of that stuff should ~really~ be backed up solid, that's what I figure the MO discs would be used for: the classic Mac stuff, archives, images, documents, et cetera.
*: This was before I learned that SP1 will not work properly in a 'mini
**: Everything I find useful for Windows gets backed up. Fortunately that isn't much, but as I have to spend lots of time finding stuff for Windows that works, I find it best to backup that which I find works so I don't have to hunt all over again for it.
I don't do computer boot images, if I need a emergency boot disk set aside then a separate external HDD would be just fine.
Let's see here:
- Archives (usually OS 9+, like 10.5.8 Combo, 10.2.8 Combo, older iTunes downloads, old Handbrake versions, the lot) ~14GB
- Book library (mostly PDFs, and kludgy image dumps rather than OCRd stuff) ~11GB
- Documents ~2.5GB
- Games.dmg (mostly older stuff my 'mini won't even run) ~1.3GB
- iTunes backup (Music+audio book=~1.7GB, rest is iOS backups, as I backup old versions of .ipas, it has been useful a couple of times) ~21GB
- Movies (various) ~91GB
- Classic Mac archives (system folder images, this and that) ~4GB
- Pictures ~2GB
- Slipstreamed XPSP2 .iso backups* and Windows archives of everything useful I find for Windows** 4GB
Free space on 250GB FAT32 volume: 77.53GB. If I put copies of OS X install DVDs, which would be nice since I have no confidence in Apple's future plans to maintain machine-specific 10.4.6 install disks for this machine, I'd best do it myself. Or 10.5 disks, but those should be around for awhile.
I'm thinking a stack of 15 MO disks should cover me just fine. Some of that stuff should ~really~ be backed up solid, that's what I figure the MO discs would be used for: the classic Mac stuff, archives, images, documents, et cetera.
*: This was before I learned that SP1 will not work properly in a 'mini
**: Everything I find useful for Windows gets backed up. Fortunately that isn't much, but as I have to spend lots of time finding stuff for Windows that works, I find it best to backup that which I find works so I don't have to hunt all over again for it.
techknight
Well-known member
speaking of slipstreaming, i love that software that lets you customize windows installation CDs. I slipstream SATA drivers and slipstreamed SP3 this way.
n-Lite. even microsoft recommends it so ive heard.
n-Lite. even microsoft recommends it so ive heard.
