Memory cards reliable enough?

In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

Be very grateful. I recently dug an old Zip drive out, and it took me
3 days of research to find out how to get the old files off of it. I
have learned it is not a good idea to backup and forget.

other than finding a functioning zip drive, what else is there?

I had the Zip drive, it's the functioning part that was hard.

that's because zip drives are junk.

They were not bad in their day and far cheaper than the syquest you were
meant to use for 'serious' backup.

both were junk, as well as jaz and all the other removable drives.

removable magnetic media is a bad idea. hard drives are sealed to keep
out dirt. there's no way to keep out dirt with a removable disk, which
is one major reason they will fail fairly quickly (and did).

you're lucky you didn't have one with the click-of-death.

I had a couple. I still have 2 computers with ZIP drives and a USB drive
an IDE and a SCSI version, not that I nreally know why, but I don't like to
see these things thrown out.

flip them on ebay. someone will buy it.

It was
an early parallel port drive, and there is zero support for those on
Win 8.1. I realized at one point that I still had a Win 98 laptop
lying about, but it still took a lot of research, and some obscure
tweaks. Running in compatibility mode was not the usual simple remedy.

a usb zip drive would have solved the problem.

still uses the same system of hardware software so you'd still get that click.

only if it's broken.

there are still some zip drives that work, but they'll all eventually
fail.

note that the click of death works like a virus. if you put a good zip
disk in a broken zip drive, it 'infects' the disk and if you now put
that disk into a working zip drive, it will get the click of death. it
spreads.


then all you need to do is plug in the backup drive and copy what you
want. should the hardware interface change, get an adapter or new
enclosure.

what of the software ?.

no special software is needed. the drive mounts like any other drive
and then drag the files off. done.

In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

that's because zip drives are junk.

They were not bad in their day and far cheaper than the syquest you were
meant to use for 'serious' backup.

both were junk, as well as jaz and all the other removable drives.

But still usable at the time and used by many.

not really. *lots* of people had problems with zip disks. they were a
highly unreliable product which resulted in a class action lawsuit.

removable magnetic media is a bad idea.
Like floppies too, and magnetic tape.

nope.

floppies and tape do not spin at high rates with a head flying very
close, so dirt is not really a problem.

hard drives are sealed to keep
out dirt. there's no way to keep out dirt with a removable disk, which
is one major reason they will fail fairly quickly (and did).

Many HDs have failed too.

nowhere near as many as zip and not due to dirt.

I had a couple. I still have 2 computers with ZIP drives and a USB drive
an IDE and a SCSI version, not that I nreally know why, but I don't like
to see these things thrown out.

flip them on ebay. someone will buy it.

Nah no point really, I'd rather keep them, one day I'll try to see if I can
find out what's on them, and that way I'll know for myself rather than rely
on someone else view of whether they are readable or not.

flip the drives, not the disks.

the disks have personal data on them which you more than likely don't
want others to see should they be able to read them.

note that the click of death works like a virus. if you put a good zip
disk in a broken zip drive, it 'infects' the disk and if you now put
that disk into a working zip drive, it will get the click of death. it
spreads.

Well that was a bit of an urban legend rather than the truth.
The click of death was NOTHING like a virus.

it was not an urban legend. a zip drive with the click of death will
cause damage to a zip disk, which if later inserted into another drive
can cause that drive to click.

in other words, it functions as a virus.

then all you need to do is plug in the backup drive and copy what you
want. should the hardware interface change, get an adapter or new
enclosure.

what of the software ?.

no special software is needed. the drive mounts like any other drive
and then drag the files off. done.

That's crap of cause it depends on the software and the way it's written to the disc.

nope.

In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

they were a
highly unreliable product which resulted in a class action lawsuit.

I've found no record of any lawsuit, sounds like someone spouting rumours.

then you didn't look very hard

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB90614738642004500
Iomega Corp. , which makes the popular Zip drive and other removable
computer disk drives, Friday said that it has been hit with a
class-action lawsuit that alleges a defect in the Zip drive causes a
clicking noise that may cause damage to stored data.

http://www.geek.com/news/victims-of-click-of-death-rewarded-543367/
As a result of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit, U.S. customers
who bought a Zip drive from a store or through an authorized Iomega
manufacturer between January 1, 1995 and March 19, 2001 will be
entitled to various rebates at Iomega's online store
(IomegaDirect.com). The rebates range in price from $5 to $40,
depending on the product purchased.



what of the software ?.

no special software is needed. the drive mounts like any other drive
and then drag the files off. done.

That's crap of cause it depends on the software and the way it's written to the disc.

nope.

Yep,

Try getting yuor stuff back from a PC that's used it's own archive software.
Try getting stuff back from retrospect without the retrospec app.

use a backup utility that saves files in a non-proprietary format.

if the backup app uses its own proprietary format, you're going to be
screwed one day, no matter what medium it's on.

In article
Tony Cooper wrote:

....
After I download the images from my card to my computer I format the
card. ....

I wonder if you're not prematurely ageing your card by doing that.
Why not just delete the files, or have them automatically deleted
after you move them to the mdeia you're backing them up to?

On 20/07/2015 10:08, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Tony Cooper wrote:

....
After I download the images from my card to my computer I format the
card. ....

I wonder if you're not prematurely ageing your card by doing that.
Why not just delete the files, or have them automatically deleted
after you move them to the mdeia you're backing them up to?

Likely a format requires fewer writes, reducing the total write load on
the card, thus extending its life. The format doesn't need to process
each file individually.

--
Cheers,
David
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu

"nospam" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

they were a
highly unreliable product which resulted in a class action lawsuit.

I've found no record of any lawsuit, sounds like someone spouting
rumours.

then you didn't look very hard

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB90614738642004500
Iomega Corp. , which makes the popular Zip drive and other removable
computer disk drives, Friday said that it has been hit with a
class-action lawsuit that alleges a defect in the Zip drive causes a
clicking noise that may cause damage to stored data.

That was "the click of death" that the Zip drives were well-known for.
At the time, I bought an Imation Superdisk drive which turned out to be
a better choice, IMO. It had a whopping 120MB capacity and there were
internal drives that were available to use in a desktop.

http://www.geek.com/news/victims-of-click-of-death-rewarded-543367/
As a result of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit, U.S. customers
who bought a Zip drive from a store or through an authorized Iomega
manufacturer between January 1, 1995 and March 19, 2001 will be
entitled to various rebates at Iomega's online store
(IomegaDirect.com). The rebates range in price from $5 to $40,
depending on the product purchased.



what of the software ?.

no special software is needed. the drive mounts like any other
drive
and then drag the files off. done.

That's crap of cause it depends on the software and the way it's
written to the disc.

nope.

Yep,

Try getting yuor stuff back from a PC that's used it's own archive
software.
Try getting stuff back from retrospect without the retrospec app.

use a backup utility that saves files in a non-proprietary format.

if the backup app uses its own proprietary format, you're going to be
screwed one day, no matter what medium it's on.

In article , David Taylor
wrote:

After I download the images from my card to my computer I format the
card. ....

I wonder if you're not prematurely ageing your card by doing that.
Why not just delete the files, or have them automatically deleted
after you move them to the mdeia you're backing them up to?

Likely a format requires fewer writes, reducing the total write load on
the card, thus extending its life. The format doesn't need to process
each file individually.

neither does a delete. it just marks a file as deleted in the catalog
while formatting rewrites the entire catalog. the difference is not
significant and the number of writes is huge anyway. nobody is going to
wear out a card in normal use.

In article
David Taylor wrote:

On 20/07/2015 10:08, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Tony Cooper wrote:

....
After I download the images from my card to my computer I format the
card. ....

I wonder if you're not prematurely ageing your card by doing that.
Why not just delete the files, or have them automatically deleted
after you move them to the mdeia you're backing them up to?

Likely a format requires fewer writes, reducing the total write load on
the card, thus extending its life. The format doesn't need to process
each file individually.

I think that a format does more writes. With deletion you are not
going over as much of the card. Wear leveling is in operation with
deletions but I'm not sure that it does much with full formatting.

In article
nospam wrote:

In article , David Taylor
wrote:

After I download the images from my card to my computer I format the
card. ....

I wonder if you're not prematurely ageing your card by doing that.
Why not just delete the files, or have them automatically deleted
after you move them to the mdeia you're backing them up to?

Likely a format requires fewer writes, reducing the total write load on
the card, thus extending its life. The format doesn't need to process
each file individually.

neither does a delete. it just marks a file as deleted in the catalog
while formatting rewrites the entire catalog. the difference is not
significant and the number of writes is huge anyway. nobody is going to
wear out a card in normal use.

Oh, that sounds like the kind of quote that comes back to haunt
one. If "normal use" is light use then maybe, but if someone is
taking photographs, or using the card for whatever type of storage,
every day, and using a significant amount of the card each time,
then I think they might run into the limitations of the technology.
You might call that "heavy use" rather than "normal use," but it's
something that some of us do.

Luckily, the price of the various flash drives is low enough that a
replacement before failure strategy is not painful.

nospam wrote:
In article , Alfred
Molon wrote:

In the past it used to be so that you could not trust memory cards, so
you would not use too large sizes, to avoid losing all images in case of
a malfunction.

there has never been an issue with name brand cards to where they could
not be trusted.

there was an issue with noname cards and counterfeit cards in
particular, however, but that's what you get when buying crap.

nothing is perfect and there's always a risk anything might fail, just
as there's a risk the camera itself might fail or that you'll be mugged
and someone might steal the camera with whatever card is in it.
however, in normal use (and avoiding the seedier parts of town), that
risk is very low.

But I get the impression that nowadays memory cards are
very reliable, so you could in principle put a 256GB memory card into
the camera, and only use that for an entire trip. Any thoughts about
this?

you could, but there's still only one copy. if someone steals the
camera, it doesn't matter how good the card you had was.

consider getting a portable storage device to offload the images,
assuming you don't want to bring a laptop.

There is available a small walkman-sized device that runs on AA NiMH
cells. You put the camera's SD card into it,and a blank CD-R , and it
burns the images onto the CD. It is fast and easy.

I use SanDisc SD cards, usually 8 GB, and in using hundreds for both
music and images, I have had only one failure.

In addition, on a field shoot,or a trip, each night I back up images to
my travel PC's solid state memory. My biggest fear is putting all that
stuff into a basket at the airports' security screening.JFK is infamous
for pairs of crooks stealing stuff from the baskets after being examined
by the TSA.

Mort Linder