How obsolete are optical discs? Do you still use them?

[corkyg]

I have three burners - one internal and two external. I use them to prepare video slideshows and photos for mailing to friends who do not have computers.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I suppose I should put in a poll or two, but I'm too tired to think about doing that right now.

Just curious:
1) does your PC contain an optical drive?
2) do you burn media with it?

I have a couple of Plextor burners that are still in use. Mainly, burning custom single-layer video DVDs. I used to backup games to DVD-R, my collection is about 500 disks. I've lost count as I haven't revised it in a long time. I also use it for smaller backups. It is sound when data is spread across different physical carriers. The more important data, I keep on 2 - 3 duplicated DVD-Rs stored in different locations. There are also special archive grade type of disks with increased protection, such as this. I also like tape. Have to use HDDs as well which are prone to physical shock, not a fan though (hate recovering data because of that). When larger-capacity SSDs come down in price, I might start using them for larger, more-frequently accessed data.

The majority of the computers that I have built feature an optical drive, mainly for compatibility purposes. They cost nothing these days. And should you need to read or write a CD-R/DVD-R, watch an old DVD movie or listen to Audio CD, you still can! That's priceless.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

We're pretty much there already. A 100 spindle of DVD-Rs cost about $20. That's 4.38 GiB each, or 438 GiB total and $0.0457 per GB. A 3TB drive nets about 2770 GiB. At $100 each that's $0.0361 per GB.

And even cheaper when you think that your entire 100 disc spindle can be replaced by a single retired 500GB disk drive.

You're forgetting something. Blu-rays. They're still cheaper then HDDs from cost/capacity point of view. Stores 25 or 50GB too, so have a lot more space then DVDs. The newer BD-XL can store 100GB/disc, but they're a bit expensive.

Blu-rays have the added advantage that they don't suffer from dye layer degradation since they don't have an organic dye layer.

While it's useful to look at possible/specific disaster scenarios, considering that disasters (I'm using that term in a personal and relatively speaking way) don't often come in predictable forms, I think it's useful to simply look at the storage medium and analyse its vulnerabilities. I look at HDDs and see the following:

1 - Vulnerable to physical shock
2 - Vulnerable to strong magnetic fields (admittedly I have no idea how strong a field is required to cause problems)
3 - Easy to read/write (say if I made a mistake and my system got infected in some way, and I connected the backup device)
4 - Vulnerable to water damage
5 - Vulnerable to sudden drive death
6 - Vulnerable to steady drive death (bad sectors)

Of those, optical media is vulnerable to points 4 and 6. Optical media also has its own vulnerability that sometimes optical drives don't like certain formats or brands of disc (which is one reason why I have two optical drives connected to my PC). Optical media is considered not to have great longevity partly because of its increased vulnerability to point 4, but I haven't personally experienced this and I have recorded discs dating back about 15 years (which I've tested from time to time out of curiosity.

Agreed. Not to mention I'd much rather use thoroughly proven technology for my secondary/tertiary backups. Of course everything can fail, but having dealt with a lot of faulty HDDs over the years, its not a question of if a HDD will fail. Its when, and when they do fail it tends to be at the most inopportune moments...

With a disc, you can just pop it into a different drive. Of course a disc can fail, but you can set things up to deal with that. Its usually easier to get data of a damaged disc then a HDD. That more-or-less requires professional help. The only thing you can't deal with are physically broken discs, but then its easy to make multiple copies.

That would be when a retired working HDD comes along, which isn't that common in my line of work.

Not to mention retired drives tend to have a lot of "mileage" on them, in theory making them less reliable...

 

[poofyhairguy]

The older I get, the bigger a fan of optical disks I become.

I used to hate the discs, especially SD DVDs, but then I realized that thanks to DRM hacking optical disks and OTA are the only true full "fair use" alternatives in the post-VCR age. So many movies and TV shows released on mid-00s DVD that I looked down on then might be the only copy available 100 years from now. Unlike real tapes they don't easily degrade when handled properly, and once the digital information is liberated from the disk it can be controlled by you in a way that is rare for modern consumption.

When you "buy" a movie on iTunes, or the Play Store, or Amazon or whatever, you only have as much access to the thing you "bought" as those hosting the service allows you to have. You can't shift the movies to a non-supported device or a non-internet connected device easily and there is always the danger that if that digital locker service you gave money to closes the servers can be shut off. I think 50 years out the only reason some of these Netflix and Amazon original shows will even exist anymore is because of non-fair use pirate copies, which will be a shame. Only the disks allow you to manage the permanence of your media.

With that said the actual disks suck. Easy to scratch, takes up too much space, and a pain to handle. I have ripped all the optical disks in my life to my mediaservers and I play everything on-demand through Kodi. So the only optical disk drive used in my whole house is the Blu Ray drive in my desktop I use for ripping.

But holy crap I am glad there were created to begin with.

 

[Hulk]

I just purchased my first laptop without an optical drive. It was no problem installing Windows from a USB drive and I transferred any applications I still have on disc to hard disk long ago.

I really only use the optical drive for blu-ray back up discs.

I can see them going away entirely in the next 5 or 10 years.

 

[WilliamM2]

I have two in my tower. Pioneer DVDRW drives I bought back in 2006. I still use them a couple times a year. I never duplicate disks anymore, so I certainly don't need two of them, but I already have them so why not plug them in?

I even have a USB floppy drive that I used last month to get some pictures off floppies for a friend. I like a computer that can do anything.

 

[cbrunny]

What's an optical disc?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I even have a USB floppy drive that I used last month to get some pictures off floppies for a friend. I like a computer that can do anything.

For some reason it always seems that one needs to use the exact interface you don't have. One of life's little mysteries... ...

 

[B-Riz]

I use them (Blu-ray) mainly for system images of the pristine variety. otherwise, the occasional windows iso or system utilities bootable when I don't have a spare usb. pictures that could be deleted but are saved and a disk from time to time to supplement the microSD in my cars head unit.

Not installed so I have to go fetch from the pc warehouse in the basement. It's a pioneer/Vantec job with esata.

LOL, I too have the pc warehouse in the basement.

Every time I help someone with their computer, I get the old one, like wtf am I going to do with it???

Time to go to flea market and give it away...

Blu-ray reader in main pc, only used for C&C Generals playing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

LOL, I too have the pc warehouse in the basement.

Every time I help someone with their computer, I get the old one, like wtf am I going to do with it???

Time to go to flea market and give it away...

Blu-ray reader in main pc, only used for C&C Generals playing.

"Pro" PC shops generally charge a "Disposal fee" to take an old PC. And then turn around and refurb it and give it away or sell it cheap on "C List".

 

[Cerb]

1) does your PC contain an optical drive?

Yes. I found the slot cover, though, so I may swap it back to being external

2) do you burn media with it?

Yes, but only occasionally.

I mostly rip with it, these days.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I still put optical drives in my workstations. I like to run linux liveCDs on WORM media for secure web browsing or checking the contents of hard drives I don't trust.

I also still burn discs. Maybe 10-15 a year. They're mainly for liveCDs or moving files to suspect computers. I don't use them for backups.

I probably burn a lot less than that. I never bought a BD burner, because I've long-since accepted my conclusion that HDD for backup of large data quantities is better; my server keeps all my client workstation drives backed up; and I back up the server. I don't need a blue-ray player, or haven't wanted one enough. So I stuck with DVD burners for building my most recent systems.

For that, a good DVD-burner can be cheap enough -- maybe no more than $25. So I've been in the habit of equipping every system. That habit replaces the long habit of installing a floppy drive in every system. I only jettisoned floppies from my equation for about the last five years, and I made sure to keep the old ones -- some dating from the '90s -- because they were becoming hard to find and (see "Hoarding . . " - - "you never know when you might need one."

A long, long time ago, I had done an econometrics project using a software package named "RATS:" "Regression Analysis of Time Series," and "Gauss," which allows for building your own statistical procedures (provided you understand the math to begin with). I saved all the text, data (in ASCII) and graphics to a 5.25" 800KB floppy. Later, I wanted to look at that stuff, and I had the floppy -- but I'd long since discarded those drives -- probably should have transferred the files to newer media before then.

I think I still have a small library of 3.5" floppies. And I'm suddenly aware that I only have one system in the house fitted with a drive to read them, and only one other machine with a motherboard old enough.

You always need occasionally to burn an ISO. If you shop for budget software, you'll more often buy either retail or OEM packages with a DVD install disc. If you want to play certain games or run some various simulators, you need to either use the original install "Disc 1" when you start the game (to prove valid license), or burn the extra permitted copy which would allow you to go from one system to another and "play or simulate."

The annoying thing I feel about USB thumb drives is their non-standard size and shape. It would be nice if they were more easy to label, and nicer if they would all just snap together like dominos glued side-by-side. So far, I just keep USB flash drives with important data, installs, utilities and formats inside a little mahogany box, and I have to fish through them to find what I want or need.

If you think about it, 3.5" floppies or optical discs (either CD, DVD, BD . . . ) can be stored like the Dewey system card files at a library. I still have about six double-drawer optical disc cabinets, two more long "boxes" with slats I bought at IKEA 20 years ago, and similar drawers for the 3.5" floppies.

I've also more recently discovered that you can now assure yourself of bootable access to an external optical USB and possibly eSATA optical drive. It was once the case of an uncertainty whether you could boot from such a drive: it would depend on the hardware. But for some time now, it has been a fairly reliable solution alternative to building every system with an optical drive.

 

[bbhaag]

I still use them about a dozen times a year to hand out too family members. They are cheaper/more disposable than usb sticks and easier for my older family members to use.

Hand my mom a usb stick with a movie on it and she looks at me like I'm crazy.....hand her the exact same file on a dvd and she smiles and says thank you.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I still use them about a dozen times a year to hand out too family members. They are cheaper/more disposable than usb sticks and easier for my older family members to use.

Hand my mom a usb stick with a movie on it and she looks at me like I'm crazy.....hand her the exact same file on a dvd and she smiles and says thank you.

"Can't teach old dogs . . " and no disrespect to your mom, because I've discovered that I also am more sluggish for the learning curves and more stubborn with old habits of the familiar.

 

[Carson Dyle]

You're forgetting something. Blu-rays. They're still cheaper then HDDs from cost/capacity point of view. Stores 25 or 50GB too, so have a lot more space then DVDs. The newer BD-XL can store 100GB/disc, but they're a bit expensive.

Blu-rays have the added advantage that they don't suffer from dye layer degradation since they don't have an organic dye layer.

Even at 100GB per disc, and even if they were inexpensive, I wouldn't bite. I just retired a few 1TB and 1.5TB hard drives from my home file server, leaving 13 HDDs all 2TB or larger. It would take 20 of those BD-XL discs to back up a _single_ 2TB hard drive. No thanks.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I have one, only reason is that it is one of the special Lite-On drives used for overburns for XGD3 isos. I guess there are ways to do it with almost any drive via software now, but that wasn't the case initially... and it was like $25.

 

[ronbo613]

I still use them about a dozen times a year to hand out too family members.

I do this as well. My parents are old and old fashioned, they don't have a computer so I make a Christmas photo DVD for them.

Once and awhile I will send data to somebody on them, not too often. I've ripped some movies from old DVD's too.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Even at 100GB per disc, and even if they were inexpensive, I wouldn't bite. I just retired a few 1TB and 1.5TB hard drives from my home file server, leaving 13 HDDs all 2TB or larger. It would take 20 of those BD-XL discs to back up a _single_ 2TB hard drive. No thanks.

I wasn't saying you should backup your entire 2TB HDD on blu-rays. We've got 2TB HDDs for that...

What I'm saying is that they're great for a secondary/tertiary backup of your important and irreplaceable files. Stuff like important documents, pictures etc. F.x. my picture folder is running on ~75GB, and so fits nicely on two dual-layer blu-rays. Which are quite easily stored with F&F (hint: they're encrypted of course), should anything happen to my house...

 

[jkauff]

I burn boot discs for emergencies, like for gParted and Acronis True Image. I have bootable USB drives for these, too, but for no obvious reason sometimes my PC won't boot from the USB drive. When that happens, I turn to the boot discs. They never fail to boot.

 

[corkyg]

Movies and music still come on opticals, This is only my DVD collection - music CDs are about 5 times this.

 

[John Connor]

I like buying my games on optical media thank you very much.

I use an optical drive for boot disks and I definitely need it for when I have to reencrypt the computers with Truecrypt and it wants to burn the boot loader to disk.

Oh! Did I mention I rip music?

 

[mohit9206]

To me optical disc is as important as the monitor itself.
I still buy physical PC games because i don't wish to download over 50gb of data on my slow connection and the fact i like having physical copies and they are also cheaper outright.
I mean why the hell would i want to download 60gb of GTA V when i can just install it from disk and get to have that amazing manual and full size map too.

 

[denis280]

Yes one.just to burn movies and save some family picture in case the thumb drive fail.

 

[DigDog]

i have a w7 install disk somewhere that i used once.

oh yeah i also bought stalker clear sky on DVD when it came out, so just 7 years ago.
who says optical media is dead.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

I use an internal SATA DVD burner, had a blue Ray left it in my old girl friend's computer in Mississippi.
Mine is used to install my OS then unplugged, I do still get games on disc and have movies too. Because my unit is usually naked, I remove it as it takes up space then i plug it in when needed,

Don't burn disc's, kinda lazy in that respect I guess.