ssd a natural progression from burning to discs?

[rh71]

I'm still burning 4.7gb DVD-R discs (more like 4.37gb max) since dual layer discs are still relatively expensive. Honestly I haven't kept up with the industry and capacity and dependability are my primary wants. Now I notice there are blu-ray discs that hold 25gb and they're less than $1 per disc. Is this what people are doing these days or are SSDs an even better way to go? Maybe portability is a reason not to go with SSD?

Is blu-ray burning technology still advancing? Will they go dual layer down the line or is that so far ahead that it's not worth discussing yet?

Is blu-ray optical media just as reliable as DVD-Rs? Better/worse?

I'm thinking of getting a blu-ray burner drive to start as they are surprisingly inexpensive and they're backwards compatible anyway.

 

[Wall Street]

Most people use USB sticks. I linked a 32 GB version for $21. They are reusable and quite durable. Tend to write faster than a disk burns, you could go with a USB 3.0 version if you need really fast transfers but for a higher price.

edit:

Also, you need to outline your needs/purpose. Is this for archival? Then I would get an external hard disk or use an online storage provider. Is this for giving out to people? Then I would still use DVD-R. Is this for moving files between your computers? Then I would use a USB stick.

 

[nickbits]

Hard drives are the cheapest per GB and probably more reliable than burned optical disks

SSD/USB sticks-meh for mass data storage

 

[rh71]

Most people use USB sticks. I linked a 32 GB version for $21. They are reusable and quite durable. Tend to write faster than a disk burns, you could go with a USB 3.0 version if you need really fast transfers but for a higher price.

Wouldn't a 30 pack of 25gb BR discs for $25 be better overall unless looking for daily portability? Not talking about for school or work - for instance if I want to save old kids videos I'm not going put them on USB sticks for 5 years down the road. Is that what people are actually doing these days for things they want to keep for good?

EDIT> saw your edit. The reason I haven't put everything on my external HDD is because I don't want to lose everything at once if I do lose it (or it fails).

 

[nickbits]

I don't trust burned disks for long term storage.. too many disks became unreadable for me when I used them.. Maybe I just bought bad quality disks, idk.
But using your example, it is about $0.09/GB, a 3TB HD @ $130 is $0.04/GB.
Even considering portability, an external HD isn't too bad. I would still backup my data to something else. I keep all my super critical data backed up to Amazon S3 and all my media is backed up to external HDs.

EDIT: My math is wrong.. they come out to about the same price.. but my other comments are still valid.

 

[TallBill]

The cloud

 

[Elixer]

Wouldn't a 30 pack of 25gb BR discs for $25 be better overall unless looking for daily portability? Not talking about for school or work - for instance if I want to save old kids videos I'm not going put them on USB sticks for 5 years down the road. Is that what people are actually doing these days for things they want to keep for good?

EDIT> saw your edit. The reason I haven't put everything on my external HDD is because I don't want to lose everything at once if I do lose it (or it fails).

You just have multiple HDs so you can keep backups of everything that is important.
Heck, the same advice applies to optical media as well, if you are not making multiple copies, then you will suffer a loss one day.
It is also better to have multiple device types for storage, to spread the risk around. Everything will fail at some point in time though.

 

[Rakehellion]

USB sticks replaced burned discs. SSD are replacing hard drives.

As far as archiving, hard drives are still the best for that.

 

[KingFatty]

Burning discs has several disadvantages compared to hard drives. Price, convenience, reliability, etc.

Also, burned discs don't have any practical advantages for your purpose of backing up home videos, compared to hard drives.

The issue seems to be resolved when you consider that you should use more than one external hard drive for duplicate backups. Never rely on only one external hard drive, you need to have redundancy.