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DVD-RAM (Patreon)

Published:
2019-01-10 07:18:56
Edited:
2019-01-10 07:36:10
Imported:
2026-06

Content

I somehow kept putting this video off, when it's been one I've wanted to make for a long time. DVD-RAM is a mysteriously underutilized format, mixing the storage capacity of an optical disc with the usability of a floppy or flash drive. I wanted to see if I could figure out why it was never widespread, and I think I sort of did.

I was hoping to get this done earlier in the day, so you'll only /really/ have early access to this for one day. I'll be putting it live Friday morning (and I'll be doing a twitter poll for an alternate thumbnail--but I kinda like this one).

(and silly me forgot to add): The TC2 video mentioned here will be made tomorrow, and I'll have it uploaded to go along with the public release of this video. If for some reason I can't finish it tomorrow I'll delay the release of the main video.

Files

DVD-RAM: The Disc that Behaved like a Flash Drive

You can support this channel on Patreon! Link below DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW ain’t got nothin’ on my man RAM. Oh yes, DVD-RAM, the format of mild obscurity which seems like it should have been friggin huge. Alas, it was but mildly useful. Here are some links that you can click on and they’ll take you places: Technology Connections on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TechConnectify The TC Subreddit (I promise I do go there sometimes) https://www.reddit.com/r/technologyconnections The second channel video that I talked about *PUT THE LINK HERE WHEN YA GOT IT* You can support this channel on Patreon! It has been amazing what Patreon has done for this channel, but also for me (your dorky host) personally. Through the support of people just like you, Technology Connections has become my job and I am so excited and thankful for it! If you’d like to join the fine folks in a pledge to help the channel grow, please check out my Patreon page. Thank you for your consideration! https://www.patreon.com/technologyconnections And thank you to the following patrons! Dane Peterson, Brent LaRowe, Kieran Cox, Hunter Schwisow, Logan Kriete, Rafał Wiosna, Adam D. Ruppe, Audin Malmin, Eric Hansen, Noah McCann, Jason R Scheuren, Rufo Sanchez, The War Academy, Yaniv, neko, Lee Wallbank, Grayson Lang, Neil Bronner, Carl Yazbek, Jeffrey Grajkowski, Christopher Splinter, Eric Merrill, Stefan Berndtsson, Seth Kneller, Clint Eisinger, Jesse G. Donat, Christopher Leidich, Mike Friedman, Svante, André Waage Sørensen, Ed McCloskey, Jasper Thun, Camilo Rodrigues, Dusan Dzelebdzic, Sam Douglas, Sam Redfern, Sen, mark barratt, Tully, Violet Moon, Duncan Ward, Tobias Faller, Justin Smith, Corey A Hudson, EpicLPer, Luc Ritchie, Michael Dragone, Manfred Farris, Eric Romero, John Laur, Patric Bates, Sven Almgren, Lutz Broska, Jürgen Kieser, Nicholas, Ewen McNeill, thefanification, Nicolas, Albin Flyckt, Michael A Kalfas II, Michael Bernstein, Kevin Kostka, Shame Zamora, Brad Wilmot, John Bailey, Alex Ilyin, Miles H, Deovandski Skibinski Junior, Andrew "FastLizard4" Adams, Avi Drissman, Jens Bretschneider, Phil Taprogge, Sam, Rich Jeanes, Jonathan Skowronek, Tim Grov, Pieter van der Eems, Philip Kvist, Brian Condron, Peter Jerde, Torin Zaugg, James Watson, Vince Terranova, Jason Nevins, Andrew Montagne, David Scott, Mike Nichols, MrSonicOSG, Brandon Enright, James Fialho, Christian Torelli, Sunchild, Kim Rypstra, The Paul Allen, toasterking, Seth Robinson, Ralph, Pavel Soukharev, Forrest Miller, Patrick Quinn-Graham, Max Zelinski, Troy Kelly, Jason Brandy, Norman Tatlock, Jesper Jansen, Andrew Johnson, Goolashe, Rémy GRANDIN, ce keen, Jake Shep83, Nick Pollard, Drew Holm, David Grossman, Ben Auch, Jeff Puglisi, Andy S, Robert, Johan Greefkes, Jacob Dixon, Matt Luebbert, SonOfSofaman, Brent Higgins, Rob Kefford, Roger Baker, Alexander Schrøder, Andreas Skagestad, Eric Butterfield, James Holmes, Tim Skloss, James-Ross Harrison, Sean OCallaghan, Lee Wallbank, Jonas, Colin Cogle, Kyle Matheis, Krzysztof Klimonda, Aaron Rennow, Gantradies, Ted Flores, Yota Ninja, Tee Jay, Jakob, Bee Jay (that’s a fun coincidence, a Tee Jay and a Bee Jay), Francesco Lezi, Countzero, Ray Chang, Kodapan, L0j1k, Chris Connett, Guillaume Tremblay-Beaumont, Eduardo Kaftanski, Winfield Trail, Miles H, Eric Nelson, Sha Nasti, Charles Surett, Ed Green, Stephen B. Hinton, Daniel Bernard, thegeoffreak, annoying and reprehensible idiot, Piotor Kowalski, Bob Slovick, Aleksei Besogonov, Michael Sims, Recycled, Meetupvideo, Jason Burgett, Wayne Marsh Don’t see your name? Don’t worry! To keep this little perk alive, the $5 patron shoutout is now on a rotating basis! If you’re not here, you should be here in one of the next two videos. If you’ve slipped through the cracks, don’t hesitate to send me a message via Patreon and I’ll fix it!

Comments

Tedd

Awesome stuff!

Kyle Olson

I think there's something you're not taking into account by calculating the price per Gigabyte - most users didn't have this much information they needed to write and rewrite, so it's not like we could all the Gigabytes on a disk easily. We couldn't get that much information from the internet, and if we were copying a CD, the best form of data for some time, we just wanted an identical disk. We rarely wanted all that data on a single disk anyway. For that reason the $500 entry rate was not very appealing.

Technology Connections

I didn't take it into account explicitly, that's for sure, but I did pepper in a few comments here and there that highlight this issue. Such as the need for 52 Zip disks. Still, even though in 1998 it was a rather absurd amount of data, by 2003 I don't think it was... in a sense the format could have been quite future-proof. Even into the late 2000's 4 GB of storage space was quite a useful amount. Of course now, that's about 1 file from my camera!

Kyle Olson

Future proof may be right, but we weren't thinking like that at the time. I personally used zip for rewrite and CD-R for long term. I never needed more that a few zip disks. I needed more Zip Drives because of the Click of Death.

Kevin Kostka

DVD-RAM definitely should be receiving the Laserdisc Memorial Lifetime Achievement award at this point. Great idea that just never found its market.

Big Car

Have you thought about a video on M-Disc, talking about longevity? I have some if they are hard to find now.

Technology Connections

Really the fact that it's as old as it is isn't even the most surprising thing to me. In 2004 it could have done very well, considering how many computers had drives at the time which could use them, and that they were easy to get. The DVD recorder in this video is from 2004, and it came with a DVD-RAM disc (which was the first one I ever had). I actually ran across the disc years later, as my mom and dad took it out of the box and set it aside, buying the Philips DVD+R discs that you see at one point in this video. Honestly we never used that DVD recorder much, as we just sorta stopped recording from TV for some reason. But I remember when 4 GB flash drives were a new thing. My first one was 128 megabytes. And I remember getting a 512 MB SD card for my little Polaroid point and shoot and thinking it was frikken GIGANTIC. And I guess that's part of why DVD-RAM is so odd to me. Knowing that it was out years earlier, but just sort of fizzled, is just weird.

Stephen Bell

For longevity (basically, archiving video of the grand kids) I buy Verbatim Datalife Plus Blu-ray archive disks. I have no idea what makes them better though, I just trust they are as good as they say they are.

mark barratt

Biggest use I ever saw for DVD-RAM was archival. With server storage space being at a premium, there were a number of software packages that would archive files according to last usage date. The recorder was like a twin-tub washing machine, 2 drives and about 50 slots for cartridges. Will try to find a pic. ( around 1996/7 )

Andrew J Thom

Great video! I remember hearing about DVD-RAM when DVD burners became prevalent in the early 2000s, but never knew much about it. Thanks! Also, congrats on reaching 250k subscribers!!

Ketafuki

Man, I remember playing Quake off a CD-RW drive! It was neat, but every time I hit quick-save, it was anything BUT.

Kiskaloo

I was a huge fan of DVD-RAM and used it as part of my backup protocols for years.

Seán Byrne

If I recall right, Windows XP (and onwards) also provides the ability to format a DVD+RW as a removable disk without any special software, whereas DVD-RW had to be written by session. The main issue I had with DVD+RW was reliability as even minor scratches caused readability issues, whereas DVD-RAM was more robust. Nero provided software called InCD that could format CD-R, DVD-R, CD-RW, etc. as a removable disk using what's called packet writing. Rewritable discs could be read with any OS that could read UDF. Non rewritable discs had the obvious drawback in that deleting files did not recover space and had to be finalised from what I recall to be read on a DVD-ROM drive or a PC without InCD.

István Nagy

This was a really informative episode. Never knew what was the difference between DVD-RW and DVD-RAM :) Wonder if BD-RAM is something which was in the making but never became a thing. Similar episodes with tape data storage technologies would be nice :)

Sinirlan

One month between my suggestion in one of comments on YT and release of this video. I'm totally convinced it wasn't coincidence :D Thank You buddy! :)

Mike Bird

One thing I'd like to know is why the CD/DVD cartridge never took off. I had smallish children, and we made our own CDs and bought DVDs. It was a godsend to have a method to keep the dirty little fingers away from the optical media. I could get cheap cartridges for like $0.10 each, and put in any DVD or CD I wanted. The sleeve it slid into when not being used also held the booklet, so I didn't need the "standard" case. But then they went away, and I guess it wasn't "cool" enough for Macs who would eventually get to the point that when they wouldn't eject a DVD, the Apple store had to give me a new iMac (2010) AND a voucher to buy the DVD that was stuck in it.

Mike Bird

P.S. I love these videos you're doing. Keep up the good work!

Ewen McNeill

Interesting video. I’d seen DVD-RAM when it came out and wondered what the point was (my need for *slow* large rewritable storage was small). But TV recording seems like it was pretty much the ideal niche. Camera usage might have worked, but SD/SSD seems likely to always be the replacement after tape. As you say if it’d been 16x DVD-RAM early it might have been a reasonable archive/backup medium. But that two went from streaming tape to hard drives as cost decreased. Ewen

Technology Connections

Huzzah! You noticed! So, I don't actually have a DVD-RW, and that disc was simply a DVD-R. So the W was fake, added in post. I thought it looked fairly convincing, but it was just the right amount of wrong to possible create suspicion. So for the last instance of using that shot, I switched it to a T to make it obvious that I was cheating. I wanted to use Q, but the font was really different and didn't seem to match at all, so I used T. Congrats on finding that easter egg! I like to mix these in from time to time.

Retro Game Club podcast retrogameclub.net

Son of a .... I spent a lot of time trying to find information on what a DVD-RT was.🤦🏼‍♂️ Then I went back to the video and I thought I was crazy at first because I kept seeing "DVD-RW", but then I found it. Yay me, I guess! BTW, I am looking forward to learning about the difference in the -R vs +R. Thank you for all your hard work. I find the videos very interesting!

Kyle Olson

I used to believe in something. Now I see it's all a complicated web of lies. If you can't trust that something's really a DVD-RW, what can you trust?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Out of curiosity, did you see my earlier post on a request to make a video on the M-Disc format? Is it something you're considering doing?

Tom G

I have a few and they are awesome, and nobody I show them to ever heard about them before.

Jonathan Jernigan

Did the DVD-RAM record at a higher video resolution than that of the rest of the DVD's(+/-R,RW..)?