• lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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    6 months ago

    They’re a very common form of personal backup. A few discs and an USB writer and you get a very long lasting medium for passwords, personal files, family photos etc.

    Can also archive multimedia of course, the smallest discs are 25 GB and can pack a few films, a season of a series, or a lot of music.

    • finley@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      i guess, but they’re not great for backup. Eps. R/RW optical media doesn’t last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged. You’d be better off with tape for long-term storage. or an M-Disk or some similar magnetic backup solution.

      • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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        6 months ago

        optical media doesn’t last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged

        I beg to differ. I’ve been backing things up to optical for 25 years now with minimal issues. CDs could be easily scratched but it hasn’t been the case for DVD and BR.

        M-DISK uses in-organic substances that make the discs mostly immune to exposure but it’s a more recent invention. Proper storage and handling still goes a long way towards protecting discs even if they’re not in-organic.

        • finley@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          That all sounds like it’s still terrible idea to use optical media for backups

        • TGTX@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Politely disagree. M-disc for BD-Rs are still absolutely worth the money if you want to properly archive something. NIST has agreed that the archival lifetime of a M-Disc BD-R is 100+ years.

          You have to be careful with normal BD-Rs because there are two different types of recording material on the market: High to Low and Low to High (LTH). You want to stay away from BD-R LTH discs as their longevity isn’t as good as the High to Low discs.