Optical Media for Backup and Archiving Part 1 - The discs

I still use optical disks for backup and archiving.  Other choices are flash memory like usb flash, SD, micro SD, and HDD/SDD drives.  Hard drives and solid state drives and flash are RW, read-write.  They will work but are larger and more expensive for a single unit or device.

The discs are always under a US dollar so it's easy to shred the old backups.  I always burn two copies for archiving and sometimes 3 if it's important data.

I know, you are saying, "Why not just use the cloud?"  I do for some redundancy, but I need some less amorphous, more tangible form for my own peace of mind. 

The Disks

CD data disks were great at the time.  700mb on one was so good, of course now I am managing files that are over 2,000mb.

DVD data disks were great for years.  4.7gb was fine until recently when I started using larger video files.

BR data disks I use now are 25gb.  25,000mb is a good size for me.  The dual-layer is 50gb, but they are more expensive and I really don't accumulate that much data yet, I hope I don't for a long time.

The Drives

My first CD drive was $330 a long time ago, then they came down to about $20.  Drives sold now for DVD are $16.  Blu-ray is about $50.

There was always a little compatibility problem with disc manufacturers and specific drives.  I've been lucky with that and did a little research before buying and all my discs worked with my drives.   I've been thru about 20 drives, they don't last a long time, so now I don't even install them in the PC case, I just go with external interface, that's for next post.