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Yeah, I think I may still continue to use the standard MD's for backup purposes. I'll save the 1GB discs for audio recording purposes. I only have 12 of them anyway. I think I have about 100 standard MD's at this point. Been buying in bulk from Ebay. Lots of people getting rid of their old discs for cheap. :-D All this boils down to my pictures, home movies, and documents from high school and college. I can replace other movies, music, etc. I could obviously never replace the former, however. I have about 18GB worth of home movies and pics. Right now I have half of them backed up to standard MD's, two hard drives of different vendors with all of the data on them, and three DVD+R DL discs with all of the data on them. I'd like to complete the minidisc backup (painstakingly slow, ugh). I'm just a little worried now, but perhaps this is more of an issue with 1GB discs rather than the standard discs. I have a Zip 750MB drive as well, but eh, those disks aren't cheap. I only have the thing because someone just gave it to me out of the blue. And yeah, I've had several HDD heads freeze up on me over the years. I'd put them in my closet on a shelf, not touch them for a year, then need something off them... and they were frozen. I could hit the drive against my hand and knock the heads free, but I'd lose about 15 - 25% of my data. Back then I really didn't have a good way to backup that kind of data. Also, I had a lot of pictures I had drawn in MS Paint when I was very young, and lost about half of them due to a hard drive crash when I was around 12. My father had backed up the machine on tape... but the tape was corrupted somehow, even though it had only been used once (hence my mistrust of tape). I invested in a Castlewood Orb drive, and a Zip 250MB drive, which saved me a few times. That Orb drive started dying on me, though - and of course then Castlewood filed for bankruptcy haha. Those 2.2GB Orb disks had a lot of space back then, though. Oh, and I was about 16ish when I got the Orb / Zip drives, if anyone was wondering (I'm 24 now) haha. Now a days I realize there is no fool-proof medium, and the best thing to do is have as many copies on as many mediums as possible, if it's really that important to you. So I'm considering getting a DAT-72 or DAT-160 tape drive. I'm hoping I can salvage a DAT drive out of an old server at an auction somewhere, but if not, I've found a few decent HP StorageWorks drives for ~$600. Right now I just bring the pics in on my external drive, hook them up to the server at my office, and back them up onto my own DAT tapes like that. (It's nice being the sysadmin heh.) I'd like to have my own drive, though - but yeah, it is pretty expensive... :-\ Oh, and if you have a MiniDV camera already, you might want to check this out: http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studi..._dv_camera.html

Yep, look up DWDD on minidisc.org's FAQ: http://www.minidisc.org/hi-md_faq.html#_q90 I always wondered how reliable that would be. Guess I know now, eh? lol So far the other 9 discs are fine, but I'm looking into a DAT160 external USB drive for backup purposes now. Not that I haven't seen tape fail, but I want to use one other technology besides hard drives and optical media. Hard drive heads freeze up, and optical discs corrode. Yeah, tape isn't perfect either, but I like to spread my chances around a bit. Hi-MD doesn't seem the way to go after all. Thought it would be acceptable to use in place of other magneto-optical drives, but eh.. maybe not. In the beginning, I was going to go with a Fujitsu DynaMO drive, but they seem to have discontinued their drives recently. Not to mention a 1.3GB blank goes for $50, and a 2.3GB blank is $100 (!!!). Hence why I thought minidiscs would be the way to go. If I bought up enough cheap drives, I just might be able to restore the data some day. I wasn't sure about the availability of the drives in the future - but now I'm not even that sure about the reliability of the discs themselves. :-\ My minidisc drives are still pretty fun for their intended purpose. And now I have even more blanks for audio. :-D

You hit the nail on the head. I'm typically extremely unlucky. Yeah, I was afraid that, although the discs would last a lifetime (possibly), the drives would not. Ah I don't know, I don't trust DVD's that much, as I've had too many oxidate and go bad. Hard drive heads freeze up over long periods of time, in my experience. About the only thing left is tape. Now I just have to save up ~$900 for an external USB tape drive. I think HP and Quantum make a few models.

QFT I'll keep my Sennheisers... but thanks for the article. I listened to those Bose QuietComfort 3 'phones before. Pretty much "meh" compared to my Senn's. I found my Senn's more comfortable, as well. Although, mine weren't $50, but they have a few budget models. *shrug*

Oh believe me, that's what I'm currently using - along with a few other mediums. Although I back up all my various data, my pictures and home movies are the most irreplaceable, so for those I'm going with the most diverse strategy that I can think up, which includes a 2TB RAID box (where most of my stuff is stored), DVD+R's, 750MB Zip disks, and Minidiscs. The 2TB box and zip disks are at my house, the DVD+R's are at my office, and I was hoping to put my old MZ-NH600D and the minidiscs into a safety deposit box at my bank, but now I'm wondering if I've chosen the wrong medium for long term storage. Figured magneto-optical was the way to go. :/ I chose Minidiscs because they are "poor man's magneto-optical". I wanted one of those crazy UDO drives but that's waay too much money, and Minidiscs are still easier to find. And much cheaper. As I've said somewhere else on these forums, ironically I never bought the minidisc player for music (playback or recording). I sort of discovered their intended purpose by accident. I was always an avid Sony CD player fan, as I thought they had superior sound. Upon listening to a short recording I made with my MZ-NH600 with my Sennheiser headphones, I was immediately sold on using Minidiscs for their intended purpose as well as archiving pictures. I was just rather shocked to find a dud. When I reformatted the disc in Windows, it said there were no errors. But I did a verified copy, and it came back with CRC errors. So I have thrown out that disc (actually, took it apart, just for the fun of it heh). But yeah, I've bought the old standard discs off Ebay, with the discs showing visible usage, and the discs were just fine. Haven't had a single hiccup out of the standard discs. Was just wondering if anyone else was having problems with 1GB blanks as opposed to the standard discs? It can't be my player, as I've tried the disc in three separate drives. *shrug* Oh, for those of you relying on DVD's to back up, and are wondering why I chose +R's over -R's, you may want to check out this article: http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/...-archival-media =)

Hmm, well ironically I just had one of those blue translucent ones go bad on me. Never had problems out of the dark navy-blue non-translucent discs, or any of my standard MD's. I haven't seen the black discs, though. I am in the process of reformatting the disc (using the command prompt). I believe it will work. Although I'm going to put it through some heavy write-testing before using it for anything again. (more info here)

Hmm, so yeah, I've been using Minidiscs for awhile to back up pictures and stuff, since magneto-optical discs are known for their long shelf life. Anyway, I recently got a pack of 10 1GB Hi-MD discs from a fellow on these boards (I don't blame him for this), in their original packaging. I copied over about 640MB of pictures and movies, and then write-protected the disc. I did all of this about 3 days ago. Well I just pulled out that disc to add some more to it, when I noticed it was having problems generating a thumbnail for one of the pics in Explorer. So I tried to open the picture and got "No preview available." Then I tried to copy the picture, and got a CRC error. Guess this is my first bad minidisc? Anyone else ever get CRC errors on a "brand new" minidisc? Are the 1GB discs more prone to errors than the old standard Hi-MD discs? The majority of my pics are backed up to standard discs, not 1GB discs. Never had a problem out of them. Makes me kind of wary of the 1GB discs, for data purposes... EDIT: Decided to run chkdsk /r on it, just to see what would happen. Lots of noise when it hit the "bad" spot. Mainly just the same noise you normally get when the head/laser/whatever switches back and forth between tracks. Just over and over, accompanied by "ACCESS ERROR" blinking on the screen. After that was done, it said it replaced a bad sector, and went on. I still seem to get "ACCESS ERROR" whenever I access that folder, though. But it isn't freezing up like it was. EDIT2: As I copy data off the disc using TeraCopy, I can't help but notice that it transfers at 666KB/s. :-P

Just wanted to leave positive feedback for JeffGrado as well. I bought 10 Hi-MD discs from him a few weeks ago. He shipped very quickly, but I just had a chance to pick them up today (I was in the process of moving, and had him ship to my parent's house). Anyway, they are brand new discs and were packaged very nicely. Would buy from again! Thanks!

I've made arrangements with jeffgrado to purchase the discs, just so everyone knows. Thanks!

Hmmm... I have a newly acquired MZ-NHF800 and it doesn't sound anything remotely like that MP3. It sounds exactly like my MZ-NH600 and MZ-NH600D. Whirls, seeks, and that's about it. Yours sounds like it's having problems spinning up or something.

I'd be interested if you would accept Paypal, even if it's for a couple bucks more. Or possibly a personal check mailed from my bank. Money order is just too much of a hassle. Keep my offer in mind if no one else seems interested.

Ahh, cool - I've never flown, but if I ever do, I'll remember that haha. Thanks!

Yeah I heard about some of that. Pretty nasty weather. It's no wonder it took an extra week haha. So far the unit is great. I'm going to attempt to take the front off eventually and try to fix that jog dial (which was the defect he warned me about, fyi). The headphones are great, and I appreciate the shorter cord. I have a pair of Sennheisers with an extremely long cord. It's nice to have a pair of headphones with a shorter cord. Sound pretty good too - they are my first noise canceling headphones. Pretty neat. Appreciate it! One quick question.. what on earth is that little adapter you included? Looks like a male stereo mini plug, and a male mono mini plug that folds out.. with a female stereo (?) mini plug. What can I do with that? haha Thanks again!

Finally received my MZ-NHF800 in the mail the other day! Took two weeks, but that was due to the weather (lot's of snow!) and UPS, not our friend Ray Jackson. Item is exactly as described (including a slight defect he made me aware of, before I bought it). The box was a bit squished (I'm blaming UPS) but he had put so much bubble wrap and packed everything in so tightly that the UPS truck itself could have probably ran the box over and everything would have been fine! I wouldn't hesitate to buy from him again. Thanks!

After comparing all the Hi-MD models, this seems to be one of the better AA-battery models. You've got me sold. I'll be PM'ing my email address shortly!