At what point do flash drives replace Discs?

[bluearth]

Its not too hard to find a 64GB flash drive for $20 or under. 128GB drives, possibily big enough for 4K, are under $40.

Not too bad when 15 years ago 128mbs of transportable memory cost you $100.

IF studios moved to releasing their films on flash drives, would the extra production of such products force the price down enough to make such a move reasonable?

Getting rid of disc drives means much smaller, quieter, cheaper players.

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by bluearth

Its not too hard to find a 64GB flash drive for $20 or under. 128GB drives, possibily big enough for 4K, are under $40.

Not too bad when 15 years ago 128mbs of transportable memory cost you $100.

IF studios moved to releasing their films on flash drives, would the extra production of such products force the price down enough to make such a move reasonable?

Getting rid of disc drives means much smaller, quieter, cheaper players.

Flash drives still don't last as long as optical media. Most flash drives have a 5-7 year lifespan. That's why they haven't been implemented. Way too unstable

[Petra_Kalbrain]

I'll never consider flash drives. As mentioned above, too unstable. Also, their size makes it easy to lose them. No thanks. I'll stick with discs until there are no more discs available.

Honestly, my prediction is that flash drives will get bypassed altogether for some other format (likely digital distribution ).

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by wormraper

Flash drives still don't last as long as optical media. Most flash drives have a 5-7 year lifespan. That's why they haven't been implemented. Way too unstable

I find this really hard to believe after reading stories like this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...tact-1.2651173

And this isn't the only story of its kind that I've come across. If a flash drive can survive for two years deep underwater in a camera that looks like something from an ancient shipwreck for, no way will it only last for 5-7 years if properly cared for. I've had one of these on my keychain for several years now and the thing is built like a tank:



I find that these rumor stories of storage media dying after a handful of years are simply untrue. That goes for discs too. I once read that factory made/pressed CD/DVD discs are supposed to last for 10 years, and burned discs were supposed to die after only 3-4 years. I have some that I burned over 10 years ago on crappy cheap equipment and they still work fine. Floppy discs were supposed to have a very short lifespan, but people still play games off them on the old 80s gaming computers. It's all about how well you take care of your stuff. Stories like these must've HEAVILY taken the average Blockbuster renter into account: The type of person who stored the rented Blockbuster discs on a sandpaper machine that was switched on whenever they weren't in his DVD player.

[mredman]

this thread is absolutely laughable lmao

[wormraper]

Originally Posted by I KEEL YOU

I find this really hard to believe after reading stories like this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...tact-1.2651173

And this isn't the only story of its kind that I've come across. If a flash drive can survive for two years deep underwater in a camera that looks like something from an ancient shipwreck for, no way will it only last for 5-7 years if properly cared for. I've had one of these on my keychain for several years now and the thing is built like a tank:



I find that these rumor stories of storage media dying after a handful of years are simply untrue. That goes for discs too. I once read that factory made/pressed CD/DVD discs are supposed to last for 10 years, and burned discs were supposed to die after only 3-4 years. I have some that I burned over 10 years ago on crappy cheap equipment and they still work fine. Floppy discs were supposed to have a very short lifespan, but people still play games off them on the old 80s gaming computers. It's all about how well you take care of your stuff. Stories like these must've HEAVILY taken the average Blockbuster renter into account: The type of person who stored the rented Blockbuster discs on a sandpaper machine that was switched on whenever they weren't in his DVD player.

for every story you hear about some flash drive that lasted 10 billion years, we have a dozen stories of them failing prematurely. they are not STABLE media, and I've had burned stuff that has failed less than a year after burning. you don't want a mass media type of storage format that isn't STABLE.

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by wormraper

for every story you hear about some flash drive that lasted 10 billion years, we have a dozen stories of them failing prematurely. they are not STABLE media, and I've had burned stuff that has failed less than a year after burning. you don't want a mass media type of storage format that isn't STABLE.

You must be thinking about the old type drives with multiple/moving parts. Those are much more prone to breaking down. The single part one like I posted aren't. The older USB flash drives with LED lights and what not - I've had them break down on me. And even if they don't break down, their performance was shaky and sometimes they would just freeze when I transfered larg amounts of data to them. The simple single part ones, I've never had a problem with them, either with them breaking down or transferring large amounts of data from and to them. And my PC always recognizes/loads them within a couple of seconds after I insert them into the USB port. And they already make 64 gig versions of them - much smaller than a blu ray and with 14 gigabytes of extra space:



I'm not trying to argue against blu ray personally. I love having blu rays on my shelf way more than a bunch of USB drives laying around. But in terms of pure storage and I mean data storage only, they can be substituted and those products are getting better and cheaper every year.

[wormraper]

true, but not THAT cheap... you can't make a 64 gig flash drive (what would be needed to replace blu for a dollar a drive (which is what it costs to replicate a blu..... it's still WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY cheaper for optical media than any other storage medium, which is why they're still used

[kobi]

I'd be very surprised if the next media format is physical. Well, their obviously will be some physical media. As not everyone has access to the internet. But 4k should fit onto blu's just fine.

[octagon]

Given the strides in both solid state and magnetic disc based storage it really is remarkable how well optical discs have held up. They're cheap, they're durable and they're reliable...you really can't ask more from a storage medium.

They've probably got at least one more generation in them but after that, who knows. It's hard to imagine any kind of hard drive based system that will appeal to mass-market consumers (the most user-friendly server/array setup will still be a server and an array) but solid-state storage shouldn't be ruled out.

[ashahzad_pk]

U mean to say we will collect 100 movies like this
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x41sPnTyf_...ash-drives.jpg

[octagon]

Originally Posted by ashahzad_pk

U mean to say we will collect 100 movies like this
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x41sPnTyf_...ash-drives.jpg

Or like this

[Show spoiler]


In case anybody's wondering, those are old Atari game cartridges. They were quite the rage in their time.

[AudioWarrior]

Originally Posted by ashahzad_pk

U mean to say we will collect 100 movies like this
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x41sPnTyf_...ash-drives.jpg

For convenience, that's how I'll start collecting my movies, keeping the discs in cold storage

[Chiefy]

I grew up with an Atari 2600
Loved it.

[octagon]

Originally Posted by Chiefy

I grew up with an Atari 2600
Loved it.

I got an actual Pong game for my eight grade graduation. The 2600 came along shortly after and kicked it quite rudely to the curb

Good times.

[Thomas Irwin]

Originally Posted by octagon

Or like this

[Show spoiler]


In case anybody's wondering, those are old Atari game cartridges. They were quite the rage in their time.

I notice there's an E.T. cartridge in there. He may be the only person to own it. Have they managed to unearth the other few million from the New Mexico landfill yet?

Originally Posted by octagon

I got an actual Pong game for my eight grade graduation. The 2600 came along shortly after and kicked it quite rudely to the curb

Good times.

I owned the Magnavox Odyssey 2 myself. Then I upgraded to ColecoVision and became the envy of all my friends.
I also had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer with an extremely noisy cassette tape drive, before upgrading to a Commodore 128. Also had a TurboGrafx-16 with the CD drive - now that thing was awesome.

[donzo29]

Originally Posted by Thomas Irwin

I notice there's an E.T. cartridge in there. He may be the only person to own it. Have they managed to unearth the other few million from the New Mexico landfill yet?

Yes. The cartridges were found. I only know because I live in Albuquerque and the news here followed the story for weeks. (It was a nice change from the nightly police shooting story.)

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/27/tech/g...et-video-game/

[Wendell R. Breland]

Originally Posted by bluearth

Its not too hard to find a 64GB flash drive for $20 or under.

Stamped disc (78s, 45s, 33⅓s, CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray) were and are cheap to produce and can be turned out in large quantities.

IMO, flash memory (NOR or NAND) is not a long term storage medium. At some point that charge on the gate of the NMOS transistor will dissipate which means the data will be lost.

[ZoetMB]

Depending upon quantity, it costs well under a dollar to press a disc and it takes a fraction of a second to press each disc, which is comprised of very low-cost plastic.

While flash drives are remarkably inexpensive, they cost many times what a disc costs and always will and file transfer takes longer than pressing a disc.

Plus, there's little room for labeling and packaging and a flash drive is actually thicker than an optical disc.

Not going to happen ever.

[Al_The_Strange]

I've personally found that existing hard drives, based on magnetic media with all those moving parts, are consistently disappointing. They tend to go corrupt at any random time (one of my biggest disappointments being the iPod, which lasted all of 8 months ). So for all my computing and portable media needs, I find flash memory viable, I just wish it didn't take so long to find bigger thresholds and more reliability (I'd hate to keep swapping 128 GB cards around all the time when a single 1 TB card could hold everything I may want). I do like the idea of solid state memory, and I hope that trend will continue (and become cheaper, better, etc).

All that being said, for movie collecting, I'm happy with my optical discs, thank you very much. I see flash memory doing okay for watching movies while you travel, but for all other purposes, optical discs are still the best, most reliable way to store movies in the long term. The only way they could change that is to make the cards/thumb drives themselves more reliable and attractive, but I don't see how.