$1.99 well spent

I was in a Walgreen's recently and bought something that was too good to pass up.

This is a computer thing, and it's honestly something I didn't think I'd be buying again, but there it was...

...a Verbatim 25-pack of DVD+R discs on the clearance shelf. I knew that these things are already cheap, but there was no price tag on it. I brought it to the front for a price check, because I wanted to know how cheap we're talking about here.

The price was $1.99. It was a very steep discount because that store just wanted to be rid of these things.

I bought it.

Why?

Indeed, why.

I just talked about USB sticks recently, and I did mention DVDs there as a means of cheap long term data storage.

$1.99 (which after tax is just a little over 8 cents per disc) is as cheap as it gets. If it were any cheaper it would be free.

DVD is good for backing up everything - except video

Video files are huge and that's just the way it is. A 10-minute 1920x1080 video recorded from a smartphone is usually (if not always) over 1GB in size. Given a DVD can hold just 4.7GB, you're not going to be able to store too much video there.

But for just about everything else such as documents, photos and most audio, yeah, DVD is a-okay for that. Most phones take photos that have a file size between 2MB and 5MB. Documents in DOCX, ODT, PDF or whatever don't take up that much space. Audio is only huge if it's FLAC or uncompressed WAV but much smaller as high-quality MP3.

As long as what's backed up isn't video, sure, a ton of stuff can be put to DVD, and moreover...

DVD will outlast a USB stick

There are two longevity problems where USB pendrives are concerned. The memory can lose its 'charge', and the USB connection point can develop tarnishing and/or corrosion. Either of these can spell out disaster later in the future where the stick can't be written to nor have its data read.

Then there's the bog standard DVD. It uses no electricity. The drive it is put in needs electricity to read the disc, but the disc itself won't lose any 'charge' sitting in storage. There is also nothing to corrode or tarnish on a DVD since the whole thing is encased in plastic.

The worst that can happen to a DVD over time is bubbles forming under the plastic. It takes a long time for that to happen even with standard discs.

I mean, sure, there are archival grade and M-DISC DVDs, but regular consumer grade still takes years before the bubbling starts - if it even happens at all.

Where USB sticks are concerned, some may believe that if you take a stick, write data to it, then put it away in safe storage, it'll still work fine 5 or 10 years later.

I seriously doubt that.

What you're supposed to do is plug in a USB stick once every 6 months or so and let it idle for a while just to give it some 'charge' (and to make sure it still works)...

...and nobody does this.

If long term storage is the goal where you can just write data, put it away and not worry about it, DVD is the better choice.

Yes, you could just get a CMR 3.5" hard drive (Seagate Barracuda Pro is the easiest go-to for that) along with a toaster to put it in, but the DVDs are easier to store away.

I was happy to find a 25-pack of Verbatim discs for 2 bucks. Decent brand, good discs for long term storage, and I found them for a dirt cheap price. It doesn't get much better than that.

Published 2024 Dec 3