Digital BW, The Print

As I am having trouble with my current SCSI interface CD burner, I have to decide whether to get an new FW-CD burner or a DVD burner. As my Photoshop files are usually about 240MB, perhaps that is the way to go.

I know of two DVD burners, the LaCie DVD-RW drive which costs $499 and the LaCie DVD DVD-R Second Generation drive which seems to be faster but whose costs I don't know.

What are your recommendations as to:

1. whether to go to a DVD burner, and
2. which DVD burner to get?

--Mitch

Mitch-

I researched this about 3 months ago and wound up buying a Pioneer 
A03 DVD burner and a firewire card. Burner was about $450, card about 
$100 and I burn 4 gigs in about 25 minutes with it.

The first thing you have to do (I don't know what format the LaCie 
is) is make a decision on what format you believe will 
be "STANDARD"...yes, we have the Betamax/VHS syndrome again.

I went for the vanilla DVD-R which is far and away the most generic 
and used today. HP and some others are trying to force a new standard 
into the market... They may or may not make it. My hunch is that 
whatever the standard evolves to, the DVD-R will be readable with 
backwards compatibility.

I've been quite happy with mine...so far only made 2 coasters in 3 
months and lots of burning (both user error <g>).

Tom O'Connell


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Mitch Alland <malland@m...> 
wrote:
> As I am having trouble with my current SCSI interface CD burner, I 
have to decide whether to get an new FW-CD burner or a DVD burner. As 
my Photoshop files are usually about 240MB, perhaps that is the way 
to go.
> 
> I know of two DVD burners, the LaCie DVD-RW drive which costs $499 
and the LaCie DVD DVD-R Second Generation drive which seems to be 
faster but whose costs I don't know.

> 
> What are your recommendations as to:
> 
> 1. whether to go to a DVD burner, and
> 2. which DVD burner to get?
> 
> --Mitch

I agree with the sentiment, unfortunately DVD-R isn't what could be called a 
vanilla format either!

For instance did you know that it comes in two versions?

One compatible with the lower-cost drives, and one that can only be burnt by 
drives that still cost thousands of dollars. 

Only the latter can be used to produce true DVD masters, which doesn't matter 
for photo archiving but is something to consider. 

And there is DVD+R coming, which is the write-once version of DVD+RW but is 
incompatible with DVD-R!

Personally I think eventually we'll get multiformat drives coming, so even if 
you can only write one set of formats, at least you'll be able to read 
everything...

On Thursday 28 Mar 2002 6:30 am, tomoc wrote:
> Mitch-
>
> I researched this about 3 months ago and wound up buying a Pioneer
> A03 DVD burner and a firewire card. Burner was about $450, card about
> $100 and I burn 4 gigs in about 25 minutes with it.
>
> The first thing you have to do (I don't know what format the LaCie
> is) is make a decision on what format you believe will
> be "STANDARD"...yes, we have the Betamax/VHS syndrome again.
>
> I went for the vanilla DVD-R which is far and away the most generic
> and used today. HP and some others are trying to force a new standard
> into the market... They may or may not make it. My hunch is that
> whatever the standard evolves to, the DVD-R will be readable with
> backwards compatibility.
>
> I've been quite happy with mine...so far only made 2 coasters in 3
> months and lots of burning (both user error <g>).
>
> Tom O'Connell
>
>
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Mitch Alland <malland@m...>
>
> wrote:
> > As I am having trouble with my current SCSI interface CD burner, I
>
> have to decide whether to get an new FW-CD burner or a DVD burner. As
> my Photoshop files are usually about 240MB, perhaps that is the way
> to go.
>
> > I know of two DVD burners, the LaCie DVD-RW drive which costs $499
>
> and the LaCie DVD DVD-R Second Generation drive which seems to be
> faster but whose costs I don't know.
>
> > What are your recommendations as to:
> >
> > 1. whether to go to a DVD burner, and
> > 2. which DVD burner to get?
> >
> > --Mitch
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
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Martin:

>I was looking at the issue of backup and archiving with CD's or
>DVD's. Instead I got an External 160GB Maxtor hard drive on a
>Firewire connection. 

That doesn't work for me as I need the portability of CDs or DVDs. Also, it's safer to archive PS files to two DVDs or CDs, rather than one hard disk.

--Mitch

On Thursday 28 Mar 2002 1:40 pm, Mitch Alland wrote:
> Martin:
> >I was looking at the issue of backup and archiving with CD's or
> >DVD's. Instead I got an External 160GB Maxtor hard drive on a
> >Firewire connection.
>
> That doesn't work for me as I need the portability of CDs or DVDs. 

The drive is a lot smaller than 246 CDs!

And 34 DVD-Rs take up quite a lot of space too.

> Also,
> it's safer to archive PS files to two DVDs or CDs, rather than one hard
> disk.

Conceded, which is why doing both is an even better idea!

Mitch,

I guess I am using it more as a backup than an archive. I have two copies of
my files. One on the internal drive and one on the external. Mine is not
meant to be portable but I believe there are some good sized portable
external drives available.

If I did want to remove an image completely off of both I would be inclined
toward the DVD as a time saver. No doubt price and capacity will continue to
improve.

Martin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mitch Alland" <malland@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 5:40 AM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: Storage: DVD vs CD


> Martin:
>
> >I was looking at the issue of backup and archiving with CD's or
> >DVD's. Instead I got an External 160GB Maxtor hard drive on a
> >Firewire connection.
>
> That doesn't work for me as I need the portability of CDs or DVDs. Also,
it's safer to archive PS files to two DVDs or CDs, rather than one hard
disk.
>
> --Mitch
>
>
>
> Please visit the Group Homepage to check the Files, Bookmarks, Polls and
other resources as they are often being updated. The page is at:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint
>
> Please follow these basic guidelines:
> - Include your full name with your message.
> - Include the address of your website, if you have one.
> - As threads develop, trim off excess portions of earlier messages to keep
them short.
> - As the topic of a thread changes remember to change the subject header.
> - Good manners are required at all time. No personal attacks or "flames."
> - Complete your Yahoo profile.
> - Before posting a question, search the message archives and the various
resources on the homepage.

>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>