Recording cassette to pc

  • Thread starter Thread starter grh
  • Start date Start date
G

grh

Member
I need to record many cassettes to pc using audacity. I worry I will fill my computer with many unwanted files. I wan't to burn them on disc after they are recorded and saved on my pc. After that I plan on deleteing the files recorded and saved on my pc. My question is will they really be gone? Are they going to be gone after I delete them from recycle bin?
 
Hi grh,

You shouldn't have a problem. If you are that low on space, just do a few at a time and delete them from your recycling bin as you go.

--
Diff
 
For your purposes, yes after you delete the files and empty the Recycle bin they are gone. I'm sure the NSA could recover them from your drive but you don't need to worry. :)
 
All the answers are right...once you delete the files, you get your disk space back. Depending on your operating system, you may wish to de-fragment your disk afterwards, those most modern OS will do that for you automatically.

That said, if you're worried about disk space, why not buy an external hard drive to keep your data on--you can now get a terabyte for around the $100 mark and that would store a LOT of cassettes forever even if you lose or scratch the CD. Or, for under a tenner you can get about a 10 gig USB thumb drive. That would store about 20 hours of cassettes at CD quality or many times that at MP3 quality.
 
Bobbsy said:
All the answers are right...once you delete the files, you get your disk space back. Depending on your operating system, you may wish to de-fragment your disk afterwards, those most modern OS will do that for you automatically.

That said, if you're worried about disk space, why not buy an external hard drive to keep your data on--you can now get a terabyte for around the $100 mark and that would store a LOT of cassettes forever even if you lose or scratch the CD. Or, for under a tenner you can get about a 10 gig USB thumb drive. That would store about 20 hours of cassettes at CD quality or many times that at MP3 quality.
Click to expand...

Thank you. I worry about the very high failure rate of external hard drives. What do you think about using dv-r to make a data disc with audio?
 
grh said:
Thank you. I worry about the very high failure rate of external hard drives. What do you think about using dv-r to make a data disc with audio?
Click to expand...
I'm not getting that.
You said you were gonna just delete them altogether in your original plans so why would you be worried about external HD failure rates when you weren't even gonna keep them at all?
With an external HD you'll at least probably have them and if you did lose them ..... so what? Since you weren't gonna keep 'em in the first place.
 
I'm not so sure about the "high failure rate". I have 3 external drives now, the oldest being almost 9 years old now and all are going strong despite travelling around the world with me twice.

Obviously I keep all important stuff archived (both on a second external drive and also a collection of CD-R and DVD-R data disks but I have no complaints about external drive reliability.

Anyhow, yeah, DVD-R works well as an archive format for me.
 
Bobbsy said:
I'm not so sure about the "high failure rate". I have 3 external drives now, the oldest being almost 9 years old now and all are going strong despite travelling around the world with me twice.

Obviously I keep all important stuff archived (both on a second external drive and also a collection of CD-R and DVD-R data disks but I have no complaints about external drive reliability.

Anyhow, yeah, DVD-R works well as an archive format for me.
Click to expand...
Actually, now that you mentioned it, wifey has a buttload of external HDs and we've yet to have one fail.
 
Lt. Bob said:
I'm not getting that.
You said you were gonna just delete them altogether in your original plans so why would you be worried about external HD failure rates when you weren't even gonna keep them at all?
With an external HD you'll at least probably have them and if you did lose them ..... so what? Since you weren't gonna keep 'em in the first place.
Click to expand...

My plan was to delete the files from my pc After I save them on disc, or I was going to bring the files over to an external hard drive instead of saving on disc.
 
Bobbsy said:
I'm not so sure about the "high failure rate". I have 3 external drives now, the oldest being almost 9 years old now and all are going strong despite travelling around the world with me twice.

Obviously I keep all important stuff archived (both on a second external drive and also a collection of CD-R and DVD-R data disks but I have no complaints about external drive reliability.

Anyhow, yeah, DVD-R works well as an archive format for me.
Click to expand...

I believe what you say about your personal experience with external hard drives, but many have not been as fortunate.
 
grh said:
My plan was to delete the files from my pc After I save them on disc, or I was going to bring the files over to an external hard drive instead of saving on disc.
Click to expand...
ah . gotcha .... it was a one or the other thing.
 
grh said:
I believe what you say about your personal experience with external hard drives, but many have not been as fortunate.
Click to expand...

It all comes down to how you treat them. External hard drives are exactly the same hardware as internal drives, but in an external box. For years now all hard drives have auto-parked their heads once they are powered down. Regardless of whether a drive is inside a PC or in an external case, its a good idea not to move them around while they are running. If you follow that one bit of advise and take care (don't do silly things like drop them), an external drive can be very reliable. I have 3 of them at home, many more at work, and I've never had a problem with any of them.

One more it of advise though - you are better of buying a standard internal drive and then getting a case for it. You want to be able to swap drives, and some external drives that you buy are not designed to be opened. its worth the extra few bucks to buy the drive and the case separately.
 
RWhite said:
One more it of advise though - you are better of buying a standard internal drive and then getting a case for it. You want to be able to swap drives, and some external drives that you buy are not designed to be opened. its worth the extra few bucks to buy the drive and the case separately.
Click to expand...

That can be a good idea and it's certainly something to consider. However, it's a bit of a bold statement to assume that everyone needs to be able to swap an external drive to an internal position. It's something I considered way back when but decided that, for my workflow (and the way I use the external drives) it was not a requirement for me. Indeed, I'm better off with my external drives staying external because I use the material stored on them in multiple computers and move them from site to site fairly often.
 
Bobbsy said:
That can be a good idea and it's certainly something to consider. However, it's a bit of a bold statement to assume that everyone needs to be able to swap an external drive to an internal position. It's something I considered way back when but decided that, for my workflow (and the way I use the external drives) it was not a requirement for me. Indeed, I'm better off with my external drives staying external because I use the material stored on them in multiple computers and move them from site to site fairly often.
Click to expand...

But its also useful to be able to remove the drive from the external case for a number of reasons, the most obvious is being able to replace it with a larger capacity drive in the future. Plus most external cases that you buy (although not all, you need to check) can accept either IDE or SATA drives. If you are like me you may have a few unused IDE drives laying around and its a good way to put them to work. Another thought: if you have some REALLY important data, you may want to back everything up to a drive and then remove the drive (minus the case) to an off-site location. I keep a drive with a backup of all my most important personal data sitting in my safe deposit box, so even if my house burns down I'm covered. Sounds extreme I know, but things happen...
 
Well, I do most of the above but with a collection of dedicated external drives. In my case, I swap frequently among several of the externals--and also take some of them with me to jobs. (I have a 30+ year collection of sound effects that I've recorded and mixed/edited for various shows (I do mainly theatre work now) and need pretty constant/rapid access to them without swapping drives and cases.

My version of "belt and braces" is to have every file on at least two hard drives--plus also stored as data on DVD-R disks stored off site.

So...it's just two different ways of doing the same thing.
 
I have all my backups on stone tablets except for a few more recent ones which I have on that newfangled papyrus stuff the kids are using.
:cool:
 
Yeah, and on papyrus the snake hieroglyph is really fatiguing---after an hour or so it gives me a headache
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top