WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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In this video I’m gonna ask that you step
back in time to the days when optical media

00:00:04.330 --> 00:00:06.819
was still a thing everyone used.

00:00:06.819 --> 00:00:09.240
Pretend it’s 2005 or something.

00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:09.860
Great.

00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:14.700
Your Motorola Razr is the envy of the neighborhood,
PT Cruisers are still on showroom floors,

00:00:14.710 --> 00:00:18.080
and your iPod--that’s just the bee’s knees.

00:00:18.080 --> 00:00:20.880
So many songs in your pocket right now!

00:00:20.880 --> 00:00:22.730
And it even plays video!

00:00:22.730 --> 00:00:25.599
Ho boy is it a great time to be alive.

00:00:25.599 --> 00:00:27.449
But you know what kinda sucks?

00:00:27.449 --> 00:00:32.200
Even though you’ve got this awesome CD and
DVD burner in your PC, it’s not exactly

00:00:32.200 --> 00:00:34.500
the most convenient thing to use.

00:00:34.500 --> 00:00:37.360
Every time you pop in a blank disc, Windows
is all like

00:00:37.360 --> 00:00:38.940
“What do you want to do with this disc?”

00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:40.690
and now you have to make a decision.

00:00:40.690 --> 00:00:42.390
Curse these choices!

00:00:42.390 --> 00:00:47.690
I just want this to appear as a removable storage device
like these new fangled thumb drive things.

00:00:47.690 --> 00:00:50.050
Or even my trusty floppy diskette!

00:00:50.050 --> 00:00:54.980
You can sort of use it like a flash drive,
but it’s slow, requires formatting, and

00:00:54.980 --> 00:00:57.370
is just a bunch of poopy nonsense.

00:00:57.370 --> 00:01:02.340
But what if I were to tell you that there
was a variant of DVD which actually was designed

00:01:02.340 --> 00:01:05.019
to function as removable storage?

00:01:05.019 --> 00:01:07.470
That my friends is DVD-RAM.

00:01:07.470 --> 00:01:08.840
RAM????

00:01:08.840 --> 00:01:12.600
That’s right, DVD Random Access Memory.

00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:17.400
Just from a single glance of this disc, you’ll
probably see there’s something a little…

00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:19.680
different about the format.

00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:23.440
Unlike your garden variety DVD-R, either dash
or plus,

00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:26.080
this disc doesn’t require special formatting,

00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:29.040
files can be added to it or erased
from it on the fly,

00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:32.480
and aside from horridly slow read and write times compared to a

00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:35.870
contemporary
drug store flash drive, it behaves exactly

00:01:35.870 --> 00:01:39.540
as if it were a 4.7 gigabyte USB storage device.

00:01:39.540 --> 00:01:42.740
Perhaps the weirdest thing about DVD-RAM is
when it was released.

00:01:42.750 --> 00:01:45.310
It’s way earlier than you might think.

00:01:45.310 --> 00:01:50.060
The first version of MacOS to support it natively
was 8.6.

00:01:50.060 --> 00:01:51.720
8.6!

00:01:51.720 --> 00:01:56.980
DVD-RAM was first standardized in 1996,
pretty much at the dawn of DVD itself, and

00:01:56.990 --> 00:02:01.420
the first DVD-RAM discs and drives were available
in 1998.

00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:05.909
So why the heck didn’t it become, like,
the gold standard of removable storage?

00:02:05.909 --> 00:02:10.960
4.7 gigabytes of storage space in 1998 was
akin to what many contemporary hard drives

00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:12.140
had on board.

00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:17.160
A rewritable disc, with completely random
access, with that much storage capacity, seems

00:02:17.160 --> 00:02:20.720
like some sort of miracle product for 1998.

00:02:20.720 --> 00:02:25.630
And remember, this is DVD we’re talking
about, so even 1X drives were way faster than

00:02:25.630 --> 00:02:30.650
a floppy disk, and slightly faster than an
Iomega Zip drive (with dozens of times the

00:02:30.650 --> 00:02:31.980
storage space).

00:02:31.980 --> 00:02:36.240
Before we answer that question, let’s look
a little deeper into what makes DVD-RAM special,

00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:39.460
and why it has these little dashes all over
it.

00:02:39.460 --> 00:02:43.660
DVD-RAM discs are structured as if they are
a hard drive platter.

00:02:43.670 --> 00:02:45.200
Or a floppy disk.

00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:50.810
See, DVDs and CDs usually have their data
written onto one continuous spiral of pits

00:02:50.810 --> 00:02:51.810
and lands.

00:02:51.810 --> 00:02:57.200
Think of it like a very long list of information,
with little bits of code peppered in telling

00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:00.480
the drive where along the list it’s reading.

00:03:00.480 --> 00:03:04.760
This structure works great for things like
audio and video data, but it begins to fall

00:03:04.760 --> 00:03:07.980
apart when you want to store many, smaller
files.

00:03:07.980 --> 00:03:12.360
Every time you want to add files to a disc,
a new session needs to be made with a new

00:03:12.370 --> 00:03:15.660
table of contents written after the end of
the first.

00:03:15.660 --> 00:03:20.730
It’s essentially like creating an entirely
new list of information, and tacking it onto

00:03:20.730 --> 00:03:22.020
the old one.

00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:27.020
And each time you do it you have to also say
where the older sessions are on the disc.

00:03:27.020 --> 00:03:31.110
And whenever you want to remove files, it
becomes tricky to utilize that space again

00:03:31.110 --> 00:03:35.620
(assuming we’re talking about a rewritable
format) without erasing the entire disc.

00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:39.130
That’s why Windows is asking you how you
want to use the disc.

00:03:39.130 --> 00:03:43.460
If you choose “like a flash drive” it
will format it as a multi-session disc, and

00:03:43.460 --> 00:03:48.580
it will do its best to present it to you as
if it were a fully-featured removable drive.

00:03:48.580 --> 00:03:51.640
But DVD-RAM discs aren’t like that at all.

00:03:51.640 --> 00:03:55.780
Instead, the information on the disc is recorded
in concentric rings.

00:03:55.780 --> 00:04:01.160
Like a hard disk or floppy disk, data is encoded
on physical tracks and sectors.

00:04:01.160 --> 00:04:05.519
These little dashes are the boundaries between
the hard sectors created at the time of the

00:04:05.519 --> 00:04:07.150
disc’s manufacture.

00:04:07.150 --> 00:04:12.379
These create a disc where each physical location
has a defined value, and allows for formatting

00:04:12.379 --> 00:04:14.850
the disc with any file system you like.

00:04:14.850 --> 00:04:19.509
And that’s why they appear to Windows as
a removable storage device.

00:04:19.509 --> 00:04:20.699
Because they are!

00:04:20.699 --> 00:04:24.990
The operating system can natively write to
and read from this disc (assuming it supports

00:04:24.990 --> 00:04:28.889
the file system) without any session writing
nonsense.

00:04:28.889 --> 00:04:34.780
Windows XP natively supported FAT32 formatted
discs, and starting with Windows Vista, UDF

00:04:34.780 --> 00:04:36.960
formatted discs were supported as well.

00:04:36.969 --> 00:04:40.919
MacOS could format them as HFS and HFS+, too.

00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:47.000
It really was an optical format that behaved
as if it… weren’t an optical format.

00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:50.219
DVD-RAM was very much the best of both worlds.

00:04:50.219 --> 00:04:55.819
And keeping with the best-of-both-worlds theme,
DVD-RAM discs were made with incredibly stable

00:04:55.819 --> 00:05:00.349
phase-change alloys, meaning that the discs
could withstand being re-written upwards of

00:05:00.349 --> 00:05:02.669
100,000 times.

00:05:02.669 --> 00:05:07.660
Plus they were very stable in storage, with
an estimated life of 30 years or more.

00:05:07.660 --> 00:05:12.719
And to allay concerns about disc damage, early
versions were stored in caddies so the disc

00:05:12.719 --> 00:05:16.259
was never actually touched by grimy little hands.

00:05:16.259 --> 00:05:22.310
So then, why the fudge didn’t DVD-RAM become
THE storage format of the 2000’s?

00:05:22.310 --> 00:05:25.050
If you guessed price, you’re probably right.

00:05:25.050 --> 00:05:27.449
But not so fast, there’s more to consider!

00:05:27.449 --> 00:05:33.430
First, let’s acknowledge that this disc
here is technically DVD-RAM Version 2.

00:05:33.430 --> 00:05:39.159
The earliest discs were only 2.58 gigabytes
in capacity, however double-sided cartridges

00:05:39.159 --> 00:05:41.749
were common which could hold twice as much.

00:05:41.749 --> 00:05:45.340
That’s 5.16 gigabytes for those playing
at home.

00:05:45.340 --> 00:05:50.720
And if you formatted these discs in the UDF
format, they could be used as a single 5.16

00:05:50.720 --> 00:05:51.960
gigabyte volume.

00:05:51.960 --> 00:05:57.960
DVD-RAM v2 bumped capacity up to the standard
4.7 gigabytes of a single-layer DVD, and of

00:05:57.969 --> 00:06:01.969
course double sided discs were still available
which could hold twice as much.

00:06:01.969 --> 00:06:04.969
That’s 9.4 gigabytes for those playing at
home.

00:06:04.969 --> 00:06:08.319
V2 also increased write speed to 2x.

00:06:08.319 --> 00:06:14.669
And this disc is actually DVD-RAM v2 revision
1, which supported write speeds of 3x.

00:06:14.669 --> 00:06:15.820
Fascinating.

00:06:15.820 --> 00:06:21.460
DVD-RAM discs did get faster, with revision
6 supporting 16x speed, but from what I can

00:06:21.470 --> 00:06:27.960
gather these discs are very rare, and along
with a faster write speed came poorer longevity.

00:06:27.960 --> 00:06:33.559
These 2-3x discs aren’t that old, I think
I bought them in 2010 or 2011, but that was

00:06:33.559 --> 00:06:36.409
by far the most common speed ever produced.

00:06:36.409 --> 00:06:41.289
Also, the cartridges were largely dropped
in favor of some magical extra hard coating

00:06:41.289 --> 00:06:45.399
on the bottom of the discs, which to be honest
seems to work pretty well considering I’ve

00:06:45.399 --> 00:06:48.699
left this disc caseless in a junk box for
who knows how long.

00:06:48.699 --> 00:06:50.900
But let’s go back to 1998.

00:06:50.900 --> 00:06:52.749
What were prices like for DVD-RAM?

00:06:52.749 --> 00:06:57.699
Well, it’s not entirely clear, but according
to the Handbook of Emerging Communications

00:06:57.699 --> 00:07:03.710
Technologies, Creative Labs had a DVD-RAM
drive available for $500, and a single-sided

00:07:03.710 --> 00:07:07.069
2.58 gigabyte disc would run you $30.

00:07:07.069 --> 00:07:09.789
A double sided disc went for $45.

00:07:09.789 --> 00:07:14.200
Other drives and discs varied in price, but
let’s stick with those price points for now.

00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:20.280
So, in January of 1999, Iomega’s Zip drives
cost just $100 for an internal drive, and

00:07:20.280 --> 00:07:23.619
the disks themselves were as cheap as $10
each.

00:07:23.619 --> 00:07:25.620
Assuming you bought 10 of them.

00:07:25.620 --> 00:07:30.550
Obviously the barrier to entry is much much
lower, but how does this compare in cost per

00:07:30.550 --> 00:07:32.040
100 megabytes?

00:07:32.040 --> 00:07:33.300
Let’s do the math.

00:07:33.300 --> 00:07:40.439
A DVD-RAM drive with one double-sided cartridge
would cost $545 and would net you 5.16 gigabytes

00:07:40.439 --> 00:07:41.929
of storage space.

00:07:41.929 --> 00:07:45.319
That works out to $10.56 per 100 megabytes.

00:07:45.319 --> 00:07:50.759
Now, a 100 megabyte Zip disk costs $10, so
it looks to be barely more expensive than

00:07:50.759 --> 00:07:54.800
a Zip disk system, even accounting for the
initial cost of the drive.

00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:58.839
If you include the cost of the Zip drive,
that same amount of storage costs slightly

00:07:58.839 --> 00:08:05.689
more on Zip, with 52 disks plus a drive costing
$11.90 per 100 megabytes.

00:08:05.689 --> 00:08:10.589
Of course, this assumes you actually need
52 zip disks worth of storage space, but let’s

00:08:10.589 --> 00:08:11.589
suppose you do.

00:08:11.589 --> 00:08:19.749
As soon as you buy just one more DVD-RAM cartridge,
the cost per 100 megabytes plummets to $5.71.

00:08:19.749 --> 00:08:24.789
A DVD-RAM drive did cost 5 times as much as
a Zip drive, but the media cost per unit of

00:08:24.789 --> 00:08:30.050
data was less than a tenth that of Zip. 100
megabytes on Zip was $10.

00:08:30.050 --> 00:08:34.000
100 megabytes of DVD-RAM works out to $0.87.

00:08:34.000 --> 00:08:38.860
One of the crazier things about this to me
is that DVD-RAM was cheaper per gigabyte than

00:08:38.860 --> 00:08:40.280
a hard drive!

00:08:40.280 --> 00:08:45.111
It took until the end of 2000 for hard disk
drives to drop below $9 per gigabyte, when

00:08:45.111 --> 00:08:50.010
DVD-RAM was available in 1998 at $8.70 per
gigabyte.

00:08:50.010 --> 00:08:53.300
And of course, the cost of DVD-RAM media dropped,
too.

00:08:53.300 --> 00:08:59.240
2000 was the year that 4.7 gigabyte discs
appeared, and the drives stayed at the $500 mark.

00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:04.300
The cost of these new discs in may of 2001
worked out to about $6.25 per gigabyte, and

00:09:04.310 --> 00:09:08.070
it was only then that hard drives began to
dip below that price point.

00:09:08.070 --> 00:09:12.710
So then, and it seems like I’m asking this
question a lot, why didn’t DVD-RAM become

00:09:12.710 --> 00:09:14.250
the new super floppy?

00:09:14.250 --> 00:09:16.210
It sure seems like it could have.

00:09:16.210 --> 00:09:21.610
A gigantic removable storage medium, almost
as big as your entire hard drive, which works

00:09:21.610 --> 00:09:27.210
natively with your operating system with a
true FAT32, HFS, or UDF file system, and was

00:09:27.210 --> 00:09:31.960
actually cheaper per gigabyte than virtually
any hard drive for some years, seems like

00:09:31.960 --> 00:09:34.830
an absolutely tantalizing product.

00:09:34.830 --> 00:09:36.900
Why wasn’t this, huge?

00:09:36.900 --> 00:09:39.620
Well, there appear to be three answers.

00:09:39.620 --> 00:09:42.950
Speed, compatibility, and simple confusion.

00:09:42.950 --> 00:09:45.080
Let’s start with the first one.

00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:52.000
Although a 1x DVD drive reads data at a blazing
fast 1.5 megabytes per second, that wasn’t

00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:53.540
blazing fast for long.

00:09:53.540 --> 00:09:56.220
Sure, in 1998, it was amazing.

00:09:56.220 --> 00:10:00.220
Not as fast as your hard drive, but way way
faster than a floppy, and a bit faster than

00:10:00.220 --> 00:10:01.420
a Zip disk.

00:10:01.420 --> 00:10:07.440
However, part of DVD-RAM’s format specifications
was data verification at the hardware level,

00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:12.750
which was great for data integrity, but effectively
halved the write speed to 750 kilobytes per

00:10:12.750 --> 00:10:16.130
second because it double-checked everything
it wrote.

00:10:16.130 --> 00:10:20.980
It does appear, though, that with newer media
and by disabling the verification function,

00:10:20.980 --> 00:10:24.760
4 megabyte per second write speeds were possible.

00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:30.860
That’s still not great, though, as a 32X
compact disc burner can get to that speed.

00:10:30.860 --> 00:10:37.140
Another big hurdle with DVD-RAM was that virtually
no DVD players knew what the heck to do with them.

00:10:37.220 --> 00:10:42.860
Much like CD-audio vs CD-ROM, DVD had this
problem with distinguishing DVD-Video from

00:10:42.870 --> 00:10:44.970
DVD-Data applications.

00:10:44.970 --> 00:10:50.230
A lot of consumers just saw DVD and expected
to be able to make DVD movies on any disc

00:10:50.230 --> 00:10:56.710
with this logo, but they’d find that DVD-RAM
discs just wouldn’t work with a DVD player.

00:10:56.710 --> 00:11:01.040
This wasn’t necessarily a problem with the
older cartridge-based discs because…

00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:02.120
cartridges

00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:06.150
(and it should be noted that the early cartridge
based DVD-RAM drives could generally read

00:11:06.150 --> 00:11:12.340
naked DVD-ROM and DVD-Video discs, too), but
once the 4.7 gigabyte discs appeared without

00:11:12.340 --> 00:11:17.270
a cartridge, suddenly the potential for missed
expectations comes into play.

00:11:17.270 --> 00:11:20.470
And this leads to the third problem: confusion.

00:11:20.470 --> 00:11:25.730
Although DVD-RAM was among the first writable
standards created under the DVD umbrella,

00:11:25.730 --> 00:11:32.600
it shortly found itself competing with DVD-R,
DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW.

00:11:32.600 --> 00:11:36.800
I’m not even going to get into the dash
vs plus nonsense right now, but the significant

00:11:36.810 --> 00:11:41.540
thing here is that all of these formats were
compatible with a standard DVD player, with

00:11:41.540 --> 00:11:43.110
some caveats.

00:11:43.110 --> 00:11:47.520
So even though they didn’t work as well
as a removable storage device on a PC, you

00:11:47.520 --> 00:11:51.910
would get just as much storage capacity for
things like data backups, and you could make

00:11:51.910 --> 00:11:56.490
DVD movies with any of these disc formats
to play on your TV.

00:11:56.490 --> 00:12:01.710
Another plus is that these formats quickly
fell in price, with a DVD-R disc running for less

00:12:01.710 --> 00:12:04.080
than $10 in 2001.

00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:08.990
Adding to the woes of DVD-RAM, all of those
formats quickly shot up in speed, with 12X

00:12:08.990 --> 00:12:13.930
and 16X write speeds becoming pretty normal
for blank DVD media.

00:12:13.930 --> 00:12:19.500
With DVD-RAM limited to 3X on a good day,
its native file system compatibility advantages

00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:22.340
came with a lot of speed downsides.

00:12:22.340 --> 00:12:25.380
And of course, there’s a fourth problem
I haven’t mentioned yet.

00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:26.800
Flash memory.

00:12:26.800 --> 00:12:33.020
While DVD-RAM and all its cousins were duking
it out, flash media started to become a viable thing.

00:12:33.020 --> 00:12:38.360
Yeah, it took until around 2005 or 2006 for
USB flash drives to even become available

00:12:38.370 --> 00:12:43.400
in sizes approaching that of DVDs, but it
was way more convenient, and quickly became

00:12:43.400 --> 00:12:46.860
available in larger-than-DVD storage volumes,
anyway.

00:12:46.860 --> 00:12:51.780
Plus it was generally faster than DVD-RAM,
with 5 megabyte per second write speeds being

00:12:51.790 --> 00:12:54.020
common in 2004.

00:12:54.020 --> 00:12:57.800
So, DVD-RAM kinda just became an odd duck.

00:12:57.800 --> 00:13:02.250
If you wanted a storage volume that you could
just throw a bunch of arbitrary small files

00:13:02.250 --> 00:13:06.080
onto, it probably didn’t need to be nearly
this big.

00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:08.110
A small flash drive was good enough.

00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:12.240
And before that, 100 megabyte Zip disks were
still plenty useful.

00:13:12.240 --> 00:13:18.250
And if you needed to backup a large amount
of data, a faster, cheaper DVD-R or RW would

00:13:18.250 --> 00:13:20.050
probably be fine.

00:13:20.050 --> 00:13:23.330
Really, CD-Rs were fine for most people.

00:13:23.330 --> 00:13:28.750
Somewhat ironically, where DVD-RAM came to
flourish was in set-top DVD recorders.

00:13:28.750 --> 00:13:31.220
In fact, that’s why I have these.

00:13:31.220 --> 00:13:36.010
Their nature as an agnostic storage volume
with extremely versatile re-writability meant

00:13:36.010 --> 00:13:38.840
that they were excellent for recording TV.

00:13:38.840 --> 00:13:42.480
A DVD recorder with a DVD-RAM disc was essentially

00:13:42.480 --> 00:13:47.550
a DVR with removable storage volumes of 4.7 gigabytes.

00:13:47.550 --> 00:13:52.310
And since there was no need for speeds faster
than 1x anyway, it was a perfect fit.

00:13:52.310 --> 00:13:58.220
So even though DVD-RAM never worked with DVD
players, DVD-recorders liked them best.

00:13:58.220 --> 00:14:00.760
Kinda weird, but that’s how it panned out.

00:14:00.760 --> 00:14:06.150
Of course this also kinda hurt DVD-RAM in
the long run, because it likely stifled development

00:14:06.150 --> 00:14:07.780
of faster discs.

00:14:07.780 --> 00:14:12.440
Since their most prominent application didn’t
even need 2x discs, there was little incentive

00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:15.590
to market 4, 8, or 16 x media.

00:14:15.590 --> 00:14:20.600
Had 16X DVD-RAM become common, perhaps they
would have become the new floppy.

00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:25.460
One area where I think DVD-RAM would have
KILLED is in DVD camcorders.

00:14:25.460 --> 00:14:26.640
Remember those?

00:14:26.650 --> 00:14:28.460
Yeah, neither do I.

00:14:28.460 --> 00:14:32.850
I kid, but 8 cm DVD-RAM
discs were available, and I think that in

00:14:32.850 --> 00:14:35.680
a camcorder they would have made a lot of
sense.

00:14:35.680 --> 00:14:42.340
Seeing how much better the set-top DVD recorder
experience was with DVD-RAM vs any other DVD format

00:14:42.520 --> 00:14:45.660
I’d think it would be a perfect
marriage for a camcorder.

00:14:45.660 --> 00:14:47.900
Easily delete individual clips.

00:14:47.900 --> 00:14:49.990
Import them into your computer natively.

00:14:49.990 --> 00:14:51.420
Etc, etc.

00:14:51.420 --> 00:14:56.500
And if they came with software for burning
full-size DVD-Rs of your clips, you could

00:14:56.510 --> 00:15:00.500
just have a few DVD-RAM discs, and use them
over and over and over again.

00:15:00.500 --> 00:15:05.991
I’m pretty sure there are some DVD camcorders
that work with DVD-RAM, but it doesn’t appear

00:15:05.991 --> 00:15:07.940
to have been that common.

00:15:07.940 --> 00:15:13.910
Most DVD multi drives made from the mid 2000’s
onward can read and write to DVD-RAM discs,

00:15:13.910 --> 00:15:19.940
so although they are hard to find (especially
these days) they are still at least marginally useful.

00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:24.800
If for nothing else, their incredible longevity
may make them suitable for archiving data.

00:15:24.800 --> 00:15:28.400
But I really think it’s a shame that they
didn’t go very far.

00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:32.922
An optical disc that behaves like a hard drive
seemed to me a sort of holy grail, and when

00:15:32.922 --> 00:15:37.320
I first learned about DVD-RAM, I was puzzled
by its poor adoption.

00:15:37.320 --> 00:15:41.370
But having made this video, it’s not exactly
surprising.

00:15:41.370 --> 00:15:45.100
Oh well, sometimes great ideas just don’t
get traction.

00:15:45.100 --> 00:15:49.240
Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoyed
this look into the life of DVD-RAM.

00:15:49.240 --> 00:15:54.650
These guys definitely fall into my “that’s
a shame” category of tech, but to be frank

00:15:54.650 --> 00:15:58.170
we’re well past optical media for everyday
data storage anyway.

00:15:58.170 --> 00:16:05.220
When you can get a 4 terabyte portable hard
drive for $100, buying 851 DVDs doesn’t

00:16:05.220 --> 00:16:06.600
make a lotta sense.

00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:10.680
I’ll be exploring some more details of the
format, such as drive behavior when writing

00:16:10.690 --> 00:16:16.240
to a disc, and comparing large vs small file
transfers in a video on my second channel,

00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:17.980
Technology Connections 2.

00:16:17.980 --> 00:16:19.690
Clever name, I know.

00:16:19.690 --> 00:16:22.760
You can check it out through the link in the
description or through the card I hopefully

00:16:22.760 --> 00:16:24.100
remembered to add.

00:16:24.100 --> 00:16:27.690
As always, thank you to everyone who supports
the channel through Patreon, especially the

00:16:27.690 --> 00:16:30.240
fine folks that are scrolling up your screen.

00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:35.930
With your generous support, Technology Connections
has gone from side project to going concern,

00:16:35.930 --> 00:16:38.180
and I’m ever so grateful for your pledges.

00:16:38.180 --> 00:16:42.260
If you’d like to join these people in supporting
the channel, check out the link below or you

00:16:42.260 --> 00:16:44.320
can hang around for the button on the endscreen.

00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:46.900
Thanks for your consideration, and I’ll
see you next time!

00:16:47.640 --> 00:16:50.240
♫ terrifyingly smooth jazz ♫

00:16:51.360 --> 00:16:56.440
DVD-RAM discs were made with incredibly stable
phase-change alloys, meaning that the discs

00:16:56.440 --> 00:16:58.120
could be with…

00:16:58.420 --> 00:17:01.860
[stares intensely with that
face]

00:17:02.100 --> 00:17:05.800
And this disc is actually DVD-RAM v2 reversion
1.

00:17:05.800 --> 00:17:06.580
Reversion?

00:17:06.580 --> 00:17:07.700
Revision.

00:17:07.700 --> 00:17:11.360
If you choose “like a flash drive” it
will format it as if it is a mul ple eh be

00:17:11.360 --> 00:17:12.360
de pe ditchi de.

00:17:13.740 --> 00:17:14.740
Eurrgh.

00:17:16.860 --> 00:17:19.860
Came with a gle be blertche buh..

00:17:19.860 --> 00:17:20.700
Most D…

00:17:20.700 --> 00:17:22.540
Most DV… [laughs]

00:17:22.540 --> 00:17:26.120
Most D… why am I laughing at the way I’m
saying “most?”

00:17:26.120 --> 00:17:32.740
A DVD-RAM drive with one double-sided cartridge
would cost $545, and would net you five dollars…

00:17:32.740 --> 00:17:35.240
five… pffffff eugh.