CRC error on new 1GB Hi-MD disc (translucent blue)

[ares139]

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

Edited February 10, 2008 by Ares139

[Syrius]

Sony's evil.

[cochra1]

Would highly recommend investing in an external hard drive for your backups. They're a zillion times faster than minidiscs, and far cheaper in terms of memory for your buck.

[ares139]

Would highly recommend investing in an external hard drive for your backups. They're a zillion times faster than minidiscs, and far cheaper in terms of memory for your buck.

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

=)

Edited February 12, 2008 by Ares139

[garcou]

have tons of personnal photos or videos on 1GB himd discs . never lost one. perhaps I'm lucky.

[cochra1]

... now I'm wondering if I've chosen the wrong medium for long term storage

I would say that MD/Hi-MD is definitely the last medium you should use for long-term storage. MD Walkmans only have a finite lifespan. Inevitably they all break down in the end, through no fault of the user, and as we all know, the format has now been discontinued so replacement players will be extremely hard to find in the future. Then you might have no way of reading the data on the MDs. Your idea to put a Walkman in the deposit box with the discs would minimise this danger. But is it really worth all this?!

There's loads of cheaper, more convenient, faster alternatives out there for data storage. You can get free data backup over the internet (or pay to have bigger capacity) for example.

As long as you back up your data at least once (or twice for mega safety - on your chosen medium) you'd have to be extremely unlucky to lose your data.

Edited February 16, 2008 by KanakoAndTheNumbSkulls

[ares139]

I would say that MD/Hi-MD is definitely the last medium you should use for long-term storage. MD Walkmans only have a finite lifespan. Inevitably they all break down in the end, through no fault of the user, and as we all know, the format has now been discontinued so replacement players will be extremely hard to find in the future. Then you might have no way of reading the data on the MDs. Your idea to put a Walkman in the deposit box with the discs would minimise this danger. But is it really worth all this?!

There's loads of cheaper, more convenient, faster alternatives out there for data storage. You can get free data backup over the internet (or pay to have bigger capacity) for example.

As long as you back up your data at least once (or twice for mega safety - on your chosen medium) you'd have to be extremely unlucky to lose your data.

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.

[kino170878]

One point that you bring up still hasn't been resolved though: why are the 1gb discs less stable than standard capacity discs? That sounds like the root of the problem here.

Edited February 27, 2008 by kino170878

[ares139]

Because of DWDD and laser differences. More sophisticated technology applied for a denser writing.

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

Edited February 27, 2008 by Ares139

[ares139]

Well, I don't know, I have had an issue once only, not enough to discourage me.

I'll got on with Hi-MD data archival and HDD. I must say I share your wariness with HDD heads freezing up, I had a few of those issues...

Tape drives are just far too expensive for me.

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

Edited February 28, 2008 by Ares139