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#1 2002-12-14 12:44:44

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: portable hard drives - cd-rw's and dvd-rw's will change a lot

with the prices of dvd-rw drives coming down, and the fact that a dvd-rw disc has the potential to hold five gigabytes(!) of data, dvd-rw's could very well become the new media of choice for anything.  why bother with huge, highly priced hard drives, when you will soon be able to get a dvd-rw for about the price of an 80 GB hard drive, and a 5 GB disc for about $3.50 apiece now (wait 3 months, theyll likely be 2-2.50)  here are my calculations.

assuming in 3 months, they are $150 (current price for a decent new DVD burner drive bottoms at $200, and that drops post-holidays).  this is the price of a 100 GB hard drive.  but now, you can get unlimited numbers of dvd-rw's for say, $2.50 apiece.  100 of these costs $369 now, lets say, $300 by march.  so, 500 Gb of data for $450 dollars total.  this much money could get you about 300 GB of hard disk space. 

the upshot, its portable!  you could store huge amounts of data  on a small CD, bring it to any computer with a DVD drive (not even a burner, a DVD drive costs about $50), and access the information.  this opens up a world of possibilities. 

beyond this, mini-cd's (not minidiscs, those are different) are out too.  with data compression on the rise, it is not inconceivable that within a year, we will have discs about twice the size of a quarter, than can store 5 GB of data or more.  entire libraries of information could be stored in the palm of your hand. 

handheld computers are on the way.

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#2 2002-12-19 15:20:56

Echus_Chasma
Member
From: Auckland, New Zealand
Registered: 2002-12-15
Posts: 190
Website

Re: portable hard drives - cd-rw's and dvd-rw's will change a lot

Yeah, I read somewhere that computer technology doubles very very quickly, but I can't remember the approximate speed. If any one knows could they fill me in please.


[url]http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?Echus[/url]

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#3 2002-12-19 17:20:51

soph
Member
Registered: 2002-11-24
Posts: 1,492

Re: portable hard drives - cd-rw's and dvd-rw's will change a lot

once every four years i believe.

i actually mistated.  dvd-ram drives can write 9.4 gb of data...price of a drive is about $300.  im going to wait until they have dvd-rams that can write to cd-r, rw, and dvd-r and -rws too.  right now theyre only dvd-ram capable, but thats always the case for a new hardware piece.

by march, they should have dvd-rams for $200 that are fully compatible with any medium...im going to pick one up.  im going to keep a dvd-ram in the drive to save all my schoolwork and misc stuff to, to reduce computer clutter.  it actually helps keep the speed up.

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