dvd+r dl discs are the best thing for long term data storage?
In '23, I copied a lot of data off a big pile of old (some ancient) discs I had, both CD and DVD. After getting everything copied over and backed up, I vowed I would never return to optical media storage ever again.
Well, that's changed.
I bought a 50-pack of DVD+R DL discs. DL means Dual Layer. A regular DVD+R holds 4.7GB while a DL holds 8.5GB. In this day and age, 8.5GB doesn't sound like much, but that's well more than enough to hold thousands of documents and photos. It's not a BDXL level of optical storage, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The bitter truth about flash drives
You can get 512GB flavors all day for real cheap. That used to be over $100, then it was $50, and now well below that.
It's very tempting to just stuff everything on a flash drive, put it in a box or whatever, forget about it, then retrieve it later when you want the files on the thing.
Bad idea.
The flash cells over time will bleed charge. If the flash storage sits too long unused, guess what? Dead drive. And yes, this can happen with SSD as well.
What you're supposed to do is periodically plug in the drive even if no files are read or written to charge the thing. This is annoying because it means you have remember to do this. You go get the flash media out of storage, plug it in for 20 minutes, disconnect properly afterward, put back in storage, repeat once a month.
But let's say you do the exact opposite and use the flash drive all the time, reading and writing files to it as you normally would. Everything is good, right? Wrong. That decreases the lifespan of the memory and you can (and most likely will) end up with a dead USB stick.
Ideally, a USB stick is best used sometimes. Use it a few times a week and no more than that to make the drive last as long as possible. The cells keep a charge, and file system remains stable... hopefully. But trying to figure how much use is too much or too little is also annoying. What's the correct amount of use? Nobody knows.
What this basically means is that flash media absolutely sucks for long term data storage, and this leads to...
The DVD+R DL disc
DVD+R DL has been around since 2004, so it's obviously a very mature storage technology. If you have an optical drive, it probably already has the ability to read and write DVD+R DL discs, especially if it was made in 2012 or later.
In Windows, a freeware utility you can download called Nero InfoTool will tell you the media types your optical drive will support. It's old, but still works.
In Linux, libcdio (and probably libcdio-utils) needs to be installed so you get the cd-drive command line utility. When I run cd-drive from Terminal, this is what it looks like:
Right near the top it states yes, the drive does have DVD+R DL support.
If I had some seriously crusty old optical drive that didn't have DVD+R DL support, plenty of external USB DVD burner drives are out there for cheap.
Why bother with DVD+R DL?
DVD+R DL is, as far as I can tell, the cheapest way to get long term data storage that actually works.
What do I mean by long term? Ten years.
Why use the disc and not a CMR hard drive like a Seagate Barracuda Pro? CMR HDD is an option, but with DVD of the non-RW variety, the files cannot be messed with once written. Once they're there, it's permanent. Also, the only thing you have to do to store DVDs properly is put them in a cool, dry place. DVD is a true "put away and forget it" media.
And one other thing. If a CMR hard drive just outright dies, your only option to get that data back is to send the drive to a data recovery service, pay a big chunk of money, and hope for the best. If an optical drive dies, the data can be moved physically. Take the disc out, use another drive that works.
Why not Blu-ray?
There is archival grade M-DISC BDXL media, but it is not cheap. At the time I write this, it's over $10 per disc. True, each disc can hold 100GB. But you need a Blu-ray burner with M-DISC support, which is also not cheap. But even if you have the burner and the discs, any time a burn doesn't go quite right, you're out 10 bucks each time that happens.
The alternative cheaper media for Blu-ray is BD-R and BD-R DL discs. With BD-R you get 25GB per disc, and BD-R DL bumps that to 50GB/disc.
Blu-ray at cheapest is the BD-R 25GB flavor, and that roughly translates to 90 cents/disc if you bought a 50-pack of them.
DVD+R DL is about 60 cents/disc when bought as a 50-pack.
But then there's the cost of the drive. Getting multiple drives for DVD is way, way cheaper compared to Blu-ray. 60 vs. 90 cents per disc isn't much, but $30 for a DVD burner vs. $100+ for a decent external Blu-ray burner can add up real quick. There are ones cheaper than $100, but they won't last. External DVD drives are the better deal.
What can fit on DVD+R DL?
Everything but video.
Video files are, by far, the largest thing anybody has on their drive(s). Take away the video, and what you're left with images and documents for the most part.
Without video files taken into consideration, 8.5GB/disc actually ends up being plenty of space to back up photos and documents.
To put this in perspective, a big digital photo is about 4MB. You can fit over 2,000 photos that size on a single DVD+R DL. As for documents, a really big PDF over 100 pages long would be anywhere from 25 to 50MB. Yes, MB, not GB.
Aside from entire-system backups, video is pretty much the only reason anybody buys big-capacity data storage in the first place.
If you have tons of video, sure, get one or two 8TB Barracuda Pro CMR HDDs (the 8TB is the best deal going at the moment).
But for everything else that's for long term data storage? DVD+R DL all day.
Yeah, DVD+R DL is old tech, but proven, reliable, and most importantly there's no periodic maintenance required. Write the disc, verify to make sure it took, store, put away, done.
Now for some nerdy notes to ensure maximum compatibility for burned data discs.
Published 2025 Feb 25
