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

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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:

The second channel video that I talked about

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[lottie]

**Coming soon:**
USB-ROM
All the speed of a flash drive, all the inconvenience of a DVD

[Nikku]

Panasonic just ended DVD-RAM production in May 2019.


RIP DVD-RAM
1996-2019

[nonAehT]

i remember my mom getting a dvd-ram recorder really late. like past 2010 because she could record weeks worth of her daily TV shows in decent quality on olny 1-2 discs and re-use them as much as she wanted. That's when i learned about the technology since it was better than any other options for this specific task.

[TheAnon]

4.7GB of storage in 1998 was more than double my total HD capacity at the time.

[DavidWonn]

The confusion portion can’t be overstated.

All of those incompatible DVD formats were the very reason I never bothered to invest in a re-writable DVD drive for my PC in the early 2000s. I just stayed with my rewritable CDs for the most part and jumped to USB sticks as they became more viable as the floppy replacement.

[YSX]

DVD-RAM was my jam back in the day! I used a single disc to get me through most of my junior school years and convinced many teachers and other students to use em. Everyone at that time had gotten used to burning through 50 packs of expensive CD Roms for single word documents. It was magical to have a rewritable disic.

[TheResidentSkeptic]

"Mac OS 8.6"...

92% of people can't associate that with a date.

[id]

Some success/fail stories are like holding a glorious torch raised high in the sky on top of a mountain, and... there is nobody around you.
You feel proud and excited and saddened and at the end you realize nobody needs that amazing fire at the top of the mountain anyways.
It's still a great achievement worth telling. So thanks for telling it.

[raydunakin]

Data storage has become stunningly cheap these days, and small too. Terabyte capacity micro-SD cards!

[radg]

A CCTV system we used regularly back in 2009 at my old post used DVD RAM disks.

The disks cost a small fortune.

[RichardCraig]

Please tell me a DVD-R vs DVD+R video is coming... I never did really understand all that mess, and your vids are like educational crack to me man! I know you'll make it easy to understand!

[yetidynamics]

most optical drives will still read and write these, thou you may need a special driver for that ability, i bought a firewire drive that could read and write these for 600 dollars back in the late 90's when it first came out, it took the cartridge type disk. it still works

[tuseroni]

like dvd-ram, my idea for car wheels made of ice also never got any traction

[jaybrooks]

The disks were between $26-30 each in the beginning. Pricing was not the issue. It was the ability to use it all over the place. A lot of drives could not read a ram that was not written in the drive.

[abnegative]

"pretend it's 2005"
*uses windows 10*


My immersion is ruined

[oneminutefixed]

Pure info, no distracting background music or generic tech intros, loving it

[chafacorpTV]

4:19 "Because they are!"
The amount of sass is why I love this channel. Alongside the learning part.

[linkinpark]

My first self-purchased camcorder recorded on these mini discs, on R, RW's and RAM. Was the first time I ever heard of DVD-RAM! And now I've learned they had full sized ones!

[andreibaciu]

DVD - RAM?
*Google Chrome wants to know your location*

[Erik_Swiger]

I'm something of a tech dinosaur - it took me a year and a half to learn what "copy-and-paste" was - and I appreciate your approach to technology. It's helped me learn a lot, thanks very much.