CDs vs. floppies and hard drive for data storage

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I keep financial data iin excel files that I modify frequently as data changes. I prefer to keep the data off my C drive , as it might be accessible to others.
I have been using floppy discs, and it is very handy to pull up the data file, modify it, and save it. Using the CD drive would be faster, as saving to a floppy engenders some clatter in the coputer, and takes longer to complete. However, I find that the data files on CD-RW discs respond to efforts to edit by saying “Read only”. I could drag the file onto the hard drive and edit it, but that is time consuming. Is there a way to make files on CDs writable?

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Why not use an external hard drive? They are relatively inexpensive these days. You can regularly find 1TB drives for less than $100 USD with smaller drives being less expensive. Additionally, hard drives are much more reliable than floppies and CDs.

Joe

--Joe

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Another inexpensive choice is to use a flash drive. You can easily get a 2GB flash drive for <$15.

Regardless of what you choose, you need to figure out how you will provide yourself with a backup. If I was using the flashdrive, I'd backup the flash drive by zipping it (with a password) and storing the zipped file on my C: drive.

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Another inexpensive choice is to use a flash drive. You can easily get a 2GB flash drive for <$15.

Regardless of what you choose, you need to figure out how you will provide yourself with a backup. If I was using the flashdrive, I'd backup the flash drive by zipping it (with a password) and storing the zipped file on my C: drive.

You can find them for a lot less many places. I've seen 1 gig flash drives for sale at a big box stationary store for under $10. Also there are SDD cards for cameras and such. Same technology, re-writable semi-conductor memory. I have had flash drives fail. It is a strange failure, un-expectedly a file is corrupted. A one gig flash drive should hold over 700 floppies. Supposedly they are good for 100 thousand write operations. You can judge for yourself how many times you update a file on a flash drive to determine how long it will last you.

There is another option regarding CDs. You can buy a CD marked RW. This will allow you to write to a CD more than once. What can be done there is you can save each version of the document with a slightly different name, ie make the date and time part of the file name, and that way you have all the versions of your document for each modification. If you had a 1 meg document, you would be able to update it 700 times before the disk would be full.

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Agree, floppies and CD’s are just not ideal for primary storage purposes, maybe secondary, backup to the backup. A flash drive would seem the best for your type situation, and they can be overwritten several thousand times with no problem.

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I keep financial data iin excel files that I modify frequently as data changes. I prefer to keep the data off my C drive , as it might be accessible to others.

If it is convenient you may try using Truecrypt to secure your data on the C drive to stop prying eyes.
You can then back up the container that stores your data when you feel like it to wherever.

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As a professional Computer Tech (retired, but still working) I have to share other peoples problems and their pain.
The most traumatic circumstance I have to deal with is the retired gentleman who is writing his memoirs and saving
them to his hard drive, with NO backup. (Like, what’s he thinking?) and then the HD crashes or his .doc file becomes
corrupted.

Since home computers have not come with floppy drives for many years now, it’s not surprising that people are not
using floppy disks for backups. But for people with old pic’s or data on floppy disks that they can’t access on their
new PC, a USB External Floppy drive is a solution to that problem.
I just don’t find RW CD’s to be reliable enough for secure data backup.

I recently had an old gentleman call me who was writing a novel and only saving his work to his hard drive. One day this
.doc file got corrupted, deleted or some such. He was on the verge of a coronary when he called me for help.
Knowing the seriousness of this situation, I took a friend with me on the service call. My friend is a data recovery specialist.
It took almost an hour to finally recover the old man’s novel.

Now the old man saves his work in chapters, not just one big file and every days work is backed up to multiple flash drives.
Word, for instance, will let you save a file and re-save a file as many times and to as many places (drives) as you wish.

Any disk, hard drive or even flash drive will crash eventually. So don’t keep all your data in one place.

Now would be a very good time to sit down with a Data Management Specialist and set up a foolproof backup scheme,
that will serve your needs. Let me give you a good example *.

* I have customer records and important documents, going back 15 years. Over that time I’ve experienced
many hard drive failures, but I have yet to loose the first bit of data. Since about 1980 I’ve built my own PC’s and I always
use a case large enough to accommodate multiple hard drives. So, one option I have for a fairly quick backup of C: is my
second hard drive.

Since its release in the mid 90’s, “Ghost” has been my backup program of choice. I backup C: every week, using Ghost,
to either the second partition on my main HD, or to my ‘Storage’ hard drive. I can also burn the Ghost image to a DVD,
which I do every month. That DVD goes into a fireproof vault, about twenty miles away at a friend’s office.

A simple batch file is the quickest way to just backup data files.
A click of a desktop icon runs a batch file which uses XCOPY to copy all of “My Documents” to a like directory on my backup HD.
That also works equally well to backup files to a flash drive. Using XCOPY and the proper switches, I can back up only the files
that have been changed or added to the ‘My Documents’ folder. Using this technique, my daily data backup only takes a few seconds.
That backup batch file can also be coupled to my Quick Shutdown routine for an automatic daily backup.

A typical XCOPY backup batch file can be a simple one-liner, like this:

XCOPY “C:My Documents*.*” M: /s /M /V /F /H /R /Y

This copies the contents of “My Documents” to my flash drive ( M: )
and saves time by only copying data that is new or changed.

A good rule of doing backups is to Keep It Simple, so you’ll do it more often.

Good Luck,
The Doctor

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I used to use tape drive backups and gave that up when the type of cartridge my drive used was no longer available….sad…it was a cassette-style backup and ran like the wind. After that I moved to CD and then DVD backups as our LAN grew, but optical media can be tricky and sooner or later you reach a point where the disc can no longer be written to, and Murphy’s Law would tell you that that was the backup you really needed,right?

So what I use now is a pair of SD cards (2Gb each) and an SD card USB reader. This really works well because the cards are small, cheap enough, last a long time, and all I have to do is yank the card reader, swap cards and it back in for the next backup. I found the SD cards on sale at KMart for $10 each, and I already had the card reader that came with a digital recorder I use with our band, so the total cost of this backup system was $20 and it should last quite a while. I don’t know if there is a point you reach with SD cards where they become unusable, but I don’t think so unless the card is physically damaged.

Win7Pro, I5 CPU, 8Gb RAM, SSD boot drive, external 4Tb SSD storage

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For large/huge amounts of data to copy or backup, there’s always the Microsoft Robocopy utility. It’s designed for reliable mirroring of directories or directory trees and has features to ensure all NTFS attributes and properties are copied. You can throttle the copy as needed, and it has both a command line and GUI interface depending on your preference. I use it quite a lot for making backup copies of my FTP site.

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If you don’t have a backup of important stuff off site, you don’t have a backup. In California with earthquakes, floods, and fires a possibility, consider online storage sites. there are many free ones and inexpensive ones to choose from. They are as close as gmail drives or “sky drive”.

Otherwise, flash drives and camera cards are so easy, fast, and inexpensive that you could easily have an A and a B and keep one some where else and rotate.

Cheers,

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Further with regard to my original question, I have a portable hard drive , brand name Verbatim, but the software to run it is called bouceback express or something like that.
I have backed up my C drive a few times, but I am not sure whether when I run a backup, if the previouus back up is replaced.
If anyone has any experience with this device and its software, could I add a backup of my flash drive to the Verbatim drive while keeping the C drive backup intact?

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I think automated, off site backup is the easiest and best. And if you’re talking about using a floppy or CD for your backups, then off site backup can also be free. Dropbox gives you 2.5 GB for free (2GB free plus .5 GB in easy bonus space). It’s saved my can’t-lose files at least once because it syncs my files instantly and automatically. If you trust an off-site company with your files, it’s sure convenient. You get an extra free 250MB if you use a referral link like this one…. 😉 https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU4NjA1MDk

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Another option is DVD RAM which is rewriteable and may, I say may, be quite long lasting. Data shows them to provide more rewrites than flash memory.

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This may help you. Wiki

I do have, and probably will still work, on old LS120 drive. Remember those? Now if I am ever in Canada again maybe I can drop it off to ya.

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A couple of posts in this thread mentioned that backing up to CDs is unreliable. I’ve been backing up to CD-RW and DVD+RW for years without any trouble. Besides the quality of burners varying from brand to brand, what most people don’t know is the quality of discs can also vary from brand to brand. So, to get a good backup, you must not only have a quality burner, but also a quality disc. Research by optical disc drive manufacturer Plextor (a division of Shinano Kenshi) found that discs manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemical under the brand name Verbatim (verbatim.com) tend to be the best choice for their burners (http://www.plextoramericas.com/index.php/dvd-rw/internal-dvd-rw/px-806sa?start=1). In testing by cdrinfo.com using Pioneer, LiteON, and Plextor burners, brands Maxell and Memorex also did well (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?ArticleId=13934&PageId=0).

When backing up to a disc, don’t burn it at the highest rated speed, since that will probably produce errors. For example, when I back up to a Verbatim DVD+RW, the highest rated speed is 8x, but I get better results with 6x. Also, while running the backup (or erasure), do not use the computer for anything else; let it concentrate on that one function. Otherwise, using the computer for something else at the same time the optical drive is running might cause momentary breaks in the laser beam, which could result in recording errors. Verbatim optical discs are hard to find in retail stores, but they are available from online sources such as bhphotovideo.com, buy.com, and newegg.com. Stay away from unfamiliar brands of discs; you’ll definitely get an unreliable backup from those.

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I use a multi approach to backups; CD/DVD, Internal and external hard drives, and my personal favorite, for
the moment, are the USB thumb drives for relatively small but critical data backups in the 1-8 GB range.
This is data of a constant updated/edited/rewriten type & USB thumbs appear to be far more reliable than CD/DVD.
I should also mention that the SD cards too are highly reliable as well. I have one for my digital SLR camara that’s
over 2 years old and sees some decent regular usage, it’s seems very reliable & robust.

For photos; DVD media backups when verified and checked regularly can also be very reliable form of
backup and storage. As long as they are stored properly and regularly verified for fitness.

Floppy & Zip drives are not among my considerations as they are too antiquated and small.

I’m hopeful for the future use of encrypted online data backups for the above storage range, but I have not fully researched this.
Reliability and security would be my main concerns with internet/on-line (secure servers) storage systems.

Backups in the 1-2 TB range and higher are a tougher and more expensive proposition. I would go with multiple external hard drives
with a combination of onsite and off storage. As long as they are not banged around or subject to dust and strong EM fields, they
should be safe and reliable for a few years.

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I use two levels of backup; one to protect against component failure of a drive, mother board, etc and the second to protect against my home being burned down or blown up..

The first level is ridiculously easy and quick. For my thousands of photos, I have archived them to CD’s/DVD’s and plan to replace/duplicate them every 6-8 years to avoid degradation of the CD/DVD material. And then for photos as well as music files, important documents, and financial records, I have an external 250GB hard drive and I use an automatic backup program by Karen Kenworthy (http://www.karenware.com) called Karen’s Replicator. It is easily configured to copy any folder to another device or networked computer on a specified schedule. It is awesome and along with another 15-20 excellent utilities, is available for free online or for a measly $5, Karen will send you a CD with all the latest versions.

Then for the second level of catastrophic protection for the most important files (mostly the financial and some personal info), I use MOZY.COM offsite storage. They will allow up to 2GB of totally free storage and you can set up your own schedule. With MOZY you are not limited to folder copying, they allow you to select individual files. For a little money, you can store much more if you have the need..

So except for copying some photos to CD/DVD media, everything is automated on a schedule that makes sense for the frequency with which I access/change/create files of other types in various programs. Piece of cake… So long as my power doesn’t fail…!!!!! And it’s cheap; just costs me a few CD’s/DVD’s a year for creating a “hard” copy of the photos..

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Sony to stop making floppy disks, and they’re the last manufacturer to do this. So hasten down to the local floppy disk store, and buy while stocks last…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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I am amazed that my post led to so many comments and suggestions. Two questions,
Has anyone come up with a cd or dvd system where one can edit files on the cd?

Is there a best, safest way to transfer folders of data files from, say the floppy flash drive to a cd for backup.
I have been sliding them to the desktop and then to the target. I guess there is also the file/send to command.
Or the ghost program described earlier.

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I am amazed that my post led to so many comments and suggestions. Two questions,
Has anyone come up with a cd or dvd system where one can edit files on the cd?

Is there a best, safest way to transfer folders of data files from, say the floppy flash drive to a cd for backup.
I have been sliding them to the desktop and then to the target. I guess there is also the file/send to command.
Or the ghost program described earlier.

Well, no one has mentioned Zip drives yet, and they have a lot in common with floppies. What is more, your chances of getting a device second-hand (or free of charge) are pretty good. You can certainly edit data while it is on the disk, and the disk unit is robust and removable and not much bigger than a floppy, with a capacity of 250 MB. I used them like crazy in a very systematic way at one time, and that was with 100 MB Zip disks with an external parallel-port connection (something you definitely won’t want unless you have a very old computer and plan to keep it), but you can still get them as an external USB device or an internal device. I haven’t checked the product line for some time, but iomegais the link.

No one has mentioned removable hard drives either, and I have some of those as well. Specifically, if you are ever in the market for a new desktop computer, HP Pavilion series computers have a bay for one or the other of two types of removable hard drives (‘Pocket Drive’ is what I have) with a capacity of up to 500 GB (maybe more by now). Be forewarned that these are slow, in that they are I think USB equivalents, and they come with USB connectors should you have occasion to use them with a computer that is not equipped with the bay that your desktop has. They are, however, fine for backups and for any form of data storage, such as you are seeking. (I tried looking those up for you, but Google has a vast number of hits but I couldn’t find an HP site that tells about them.)

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I am now using a flash drive to do what I did on the floppies, and I can edit the files as I was before. Just one thing that will be more hassle;
since the flash drive and my printer both use the same USB port, I can’t print directly from the flash frive.

I could do what I sometimes do with files on a CD i.e minimize the screen so the file or folder can be slid onto the desk top, and the edit it.
Perhaps it would be better to save the opened file to another name and C: drive location, print it, then delete the new copy.

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I am now using a flash drive to do what I did on the floppies, and I can edit the files as I was before. Just one thing that will be more hassle;
since the flash drive and my printer both use the same USB port, I can’t print directly from the flash frive.

For twenty bucks or less you can purchase a hub. It will have a male connector to your USB port, and usually four female USB ports to yield an additional three USB ports (plus one to make up for your ‘lost’ port). With four ports you will be in business. Normally a hub will come with its own power supply (and sometimes a switch). For light duty items such as a flash drive you will have no need of the power supply, but if you plan to run any devices that use significant power from the USB source, then you will have to use the power supply. You may want to shop around a bit for this after assessing your needs, present and future. I should add that since you are using floppies and have a single USB port, chances are that your USB is version 1 (or 1.1), which is forty times slower than the current version 2 and slower still than version 3, which is the next generation and for which compatible devices are already available. On the other hand, it means that you can purchase just about any hub so long as it is for your present needs only, which may be the most cost-effective choice.

Another alternative is to add a USB2 card to your computer (if it’s a desktop), which will be far neater when installed and have four USB2 ports, with the existing port still in place.

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I am now using a flash drive to do what I did on the floppies, and I can edit the files as I was before. Just one thing that will be more hassle;
since the flash drive and my printer both use the same USB port, I can’t print directly from the flash frive.

I could do what I sometimes do with files on a CD i.e minimize the screen so the file or folder can be slid onto the desk top, and the edit it.
Perhaps it would be better to save the opened file to another name and C: drive location, print it, then delete the new copy.

A USB interface card with 5 ports is in the neighborhood of $10. Put one in the PC, plug the printer into that, and save the single port in the front of the machine for removable devices.

Edit: DUH! for some reason I didn’t see page 2 of this thread. This was already suggested. Sorry.

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I have seen much elsewhere in the Lounge about the risks of long-term storage of data on CD/DVD, hard Disk, Flash/thumb drives and “floppy/stiffy” disks.

Yesterday, on impulse, I hauled out some old “stiffy” disks containing data from 1994 and accessed them via a (never-before-used) USB drive that came with my Laptop. I had no problem opening the MS Word documents that had been saved all those years ago. Of course, I realise that the hardware to access such data is rapidly disappearing, but it was of some consolation to note that the data was, in fact, still OK after 16 years!

It seems to me, it is not necessarily the ability of the storage media to mainttain the integrity of data over time that is the issue, but rather the rapid evolution of hardware that could render access to older storage media impossible with the (rapid) passage of time.

SO: Every two-to three years, it seems wise to copy your stored data onto the latest storage media using the latest (current) media and software to ensure continuing compatibility.

My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.

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It’s not the most popular form of backup software around so you might have to actually read their product spec sheets and other relevant information.

BounceBack® Ultimate Hard Drive Backup Software

bounceback express backup software

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Personally, I prefer to use a ‘portable’ hard drive, such a Samsung S2, for my immediate backups that I need to carry around. I found USB flash memory too slow and unreliable, especially if you don’t consistently use the Safely Remove feature. And unless you format it it NTFS, you cannot use files greater than 4GB. These portable drives are no more inconvenient to carry around than a mobile phone (most of which are larger than the S2).

For permanent backups, I ghost to external drives via eSATA.

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