We should go back to doing it, physical media is where it's at.
this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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Physical media yes, CDs or DVDs no. Most discs I burned are probably unreadable by now. I remember my favorite artist explaining how he probably had to stop making music because it just wasn't financially viable. So I decided to buy all his albums (I had all the albums in mp3 format for years). Its about 10 years later, all the CDs are lost or destroyed (most in my car). I still have a NAS with the original mp3s I downloaded 20 years ago.
Yeah, I burned 100s of music cds as well about 20 years ago, and stored them in those books with slots. They weren't stored in a car, but still about a quart of them doesn't play anymore, and I am sure it won't be long before none of them will. All my store bought cds of the same age or older still works fine though.
Homeburning is not a good physical media alternative.
Homeburning can be surprisingly robust as a backup method, and as an option of physical media, but I'd still keep backups on an actual NAS as well. There's also a ton of variables that affect the lifetime of a burnt CD, like dyes used (cyanine - phthalocyanine - azo), lamination quality, storage and the burner used. Especially the quality and intensity of the build has a surprisingly strong effect, despite things being set in a standard – you can get a lot more storage life out of a CD burned using a quality 5.25" burner compared to a budget slim drive.
Also early discs based on cyanine had a notoriously short shelf life compared to the later archival quality discs, around 30 years or so in optimal conditions (and typically a lot less), so much of the stuff burnt in 90's and 00's has already began deteriorating. More recent quality discs can last over a century if stored properly, but the older ones can't.
DVDs can also often have issues with delamination, meaning that especially the outer rim of the disc can start exhibiting bit rot quite early if you're using low quality media. I've noticed even new discs having signs of early delamination between the two disc halves (DVDs have the data layer in between two acrylic discs, unlike CDs which have it on the backside directly under the reflective coating). I've also experienced a lot of issues when burning multilayer DVDs that might affect how long they last in storage, so for actual backups I'd prefer using a single layer disc instead.
But as per reasons for still using discs – they're an unparalleled cold storage solution. With proper care you can actually leave them be for decades and be sure the data is still readable, unlike with SSDs which will lose their data when unpowered for a long period of time. Tape is a good option, but not really viable for consumers – also tape needs more active upkeep, since you typically have to copy over the old data to new media every 20-30 years or so (promised life in archival is 30 years, after which it might not be possible to get new drives for reading the tapes). Optical is also king when you need to transfer data into air-gapped environments, since with optical media it's relatively easy to audit that what's burned to the disc is unalterable. There's a reason why I still keep a full install set of Debian handy.
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Sigh. I work in medical IT. They still burn shit. I've written procedures for USB, but alas...
Mdisks are a viable offline long term backup solution, and cheaper to get started with than tape drives.
Last week isn't really that long ago. Going through my mom's old things and found a PC she bought new back in 2013. A Dell Optiplex 790 with a dvdrw in it.
I just happened to have a couple of blanks so I verified that it worked before pulling it out and using it as an external drive. Works that way as well on my much newer Ryzen 5800x build in a case with no 5.25" bays. (Or externally accessed 3.5s for that matter. No external bays of any sort other than some USB ports on the front.)
My 2006 Honda also has a 6 disc changer and it sounds better than the Bluetooth adapter I connected to it. (It is wired to the back of the factory sound system, but Bluetooth audio just sounds flat to me, even on the best speakers)
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Happened around 2010. Trust me I remember.
My last ISO was hirens boot CD. Shit like me test and whatnot
Why is this written in the past tense?
i sure was fucking hoping it was though
I just burned one today, it was the easiest way to transfer a game to a Windows 95 notebook. 🫠
Wait is that in the background supposed to be the tardis?
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Jokes on you, I still burn my acquired digital media to BluRay discs
Disk rot is like 25 years while an SSD still doesn't have that kind of shelf life
Doesn't it make more sense use harddisks?
I mean, the ultimate long terms storage medium seems to be tape, but that stuff is very expensive, but outside that harddisks seem to have the best balance of accessibility and shelf life.
Who are these mad men who are dumping stuff to SSDs and then sitting them on a shelf? Can't get my mind around it.
You'd be surprised. And then they tell me disk rot makes BD not recommended.... meanwhile this happens after several decades and is exceedingly rare
Right post there chief
i burned a cd 2 weeks ago.
Ok, boomer
unneccessarily rude!
They might be just genX.
millennial. turned 40 this year.
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I have not yet begun to peak. I'm gonna make a driving CD eventually
I still have a big stack of blank CDs and DVDs. I burned a DVD late last year. I don't think I've hit my last time yet. But maybe.
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Unless I die tomorrow, you're wrong.
I do the opposite now. I buy discs cheap from bin stores, rip them onto my desktop and then upload to my home library for more affordable 'streaming'.
You can go burn a CD and know that it would be the last time. Not only is it not yet dead, it is still pretty widely used.
I still burn CDs. This whole streaming thing won't last. Also, my back hurts...
The real meta is to have a hard drive full of flac files and use tailscale to stream them wherever you are from your computer at home
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I burn Blu-rays once in a while. They work for backup.
They don't last very long. About 5-10 years at most, and that's if you bought special archival burnable DVDs. If you depend on them for backups, you should check the integrity annually (always include a checksum like SHA256 with any backup archive).
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Occasionally break out the burner, it’s just very rare. Plus these days it’s a portable little usb drive.
I burnt about 100 disks last year as an offsite, nuclear resistant backup... though, if nuclear war broke out, that would be the least of my worries
Even if nuclear war breaks out, at least the bank will still have records of how much we still owe them :)
It was a CD rw and didn't actually work. The data wasn't there.