Retire the Optical Drive? I Don’t Think So

One of the infrequent writers, at ZDNet , put up a piece today, telling how he has removed the optical drive from his macBook, and thinks that there is no need for optical drives any more, as the time for storage using that medium has passed.

I sometimes wonder if, on slow days, they have a set of outrageous topics, and they simply pick one to write, so that there will be something on the page.

Far from going to the other end of the spectrum, I will not say that optical drives are the only way one should store things. I am not that rash, or ignorant. But I do think that it is rash, if not a bit ignorant, to declare that hard drives, flash storage, and downloads is what we should rely upon solely for data.

Taking the last first, there is not always connectivity. Barring the loss of local connection to the internet, there is always a chance that what you want will be located at a website that is currently, or possibly permanently, down. Then where are you? I remember writing a piece a few months ago, with a rant about the loss of standard places where freeware, drivers, and other such things are stored, in duplicate or more. Having literally hundreds of pointers to only one spot for any piece of information on the entire internet is simply inane. No site is so reliable, no data so secure, that replication is unwarranted.

Next, anyone having lost a flash drive, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, knows why flash storage as the only way to archive information is beyond stupid.

Hard drives? Hard drives today, are simply amazing for what they accomplish, daily, and over and over. Yet, they are also prone to failure, and always at the worst time. If the very best care is taken, their lives are usually long, but the chance of failure, at an odd moment is still there, Along with the mechanical failure, there is also the erasure factor, whether by the drive head, through user mistake, or some external means. When speaking of hard drives, and transporting them, as one would have to do, if the only means of storage was with that medium, the chance of drive failure from dropping is always a possibility. No matter how many G’s the manufacturer says the drive will withstand, a nasty fall always seems to exceed it.

No, I disagree with that writer strenuously, I don’t think the optical drive is ready for the museum, any more than the floppy was when Apple decided to remove it from their line. There is little need for floppies today, but we’re more than 10 years on from where Apple decided it was necessary to ditch them. When you consider that Windows XP is still the world’s most popular operating system, I’d say that more or less mandates the floppy be given a reprieve, as no one installs a copy of XP today, with a need to use a non-standard drive controller, but that the floppy comes into play when F6 gets pressed to load that driver.

Instead of trying to put all the data eggs in one basket, it is better to distribute the possibility of failure, and use each medium for what it does best. Hard drives are fast, and are good when data must be repetitively accessed. Optical drives are very good, for long term storage, when you can control the temperature, and the environment, so as not to abrade the discs. Flash is good for small transfers, and do very well at taking the place of floppies, as were used in the days of ’sneakernet’.

When I need to keep archival copies of anything, optical is my first choice, because hard drives are still too expensive to store all that I do – for anyone else, it may be different.  However, using optical drives, with quality media, and controlling the temperature and humidity where stored is a very good way to keep large quantities of data, for a very long time.

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