working with DVD data storage in 2025
Since I started using DVD again for long term data storage, I've had ups and downs with this. Things were off to a rocky start at first, and it took me a few tries (along with several discs that ended up being nothing but "coasters" due to bad writes) before I found out what worked.
I figured I might as well document all this here since a lot of this is sprawled across the internet in hard-to-find places. I've mentioned some of what's below before but will also put it here to keep all the info in one spot.
How long will DVD last in cold storage?
"Cold storage" means the discs put into a case or folder and stored in a cool, dry place (like a closet) after being written to.
Answer: About 10 years. Discs don't last forever, but they certainly will outlast any flash media. They'll also outlast most hard drives since the majority of those use crappy SMR these days instead of a proper CMR like the Seagate Barracuda Pro.
Does brand of disc matter?
It used to, but not anymore. The go-to brand these days is Verbatim, with the cheaper stuff being "Life Series" and the higher end being AZO that has special dye in its construction.
Does internal or external drive matter?
Yes, and basically for one reason. Power.
There is the increased chance of bad writes using an external optical drive because the power delivery isn't as good over USB as it is when connected directly to a PC's power supply.
Is there a way to compensate for this when using USB? Yes. Write your discs slower. The drive will require less power to spin the disc and dramatically increase the chance of a 100% good write.
If using a graphical program for disc writing, you should have the option to choose a slower write speed.
If using Linux on the command line, the easiest way to slow down the write is to use growisofs with the -speed=1 option.
Let's say you make an ISO first using genisoimage. You make a folder called stuff on the Desktop, put your files in there, and generate the ISO this way, replacing user with your Linux machine username:
cd Desktop;genisoimage -rJ -input-charset utf-8 -V disc-name-here -o /home/user/Desktop/dvd.iso stuff
After that, you put in a blank disc and run growisofs like this, changing /dev/sr1 to whatever your path is for your DVD drive:
growisofs -speed=1 -dvd-compat -Z /dev/sr1=dvd.iso
For the part that says -speed=1, that will slow the writing speed to a "safe" level. Not all the way down to 1x, but slow enough to where writes will complete successfully if you encounter problems at a faster writing speed.
Does individual file size matter?
Yes.
For ultra-compatible discs, no single file should be over 2GiB - 1 byte in size, which is exactly 2,147,483,647 bytes.
You can split any file using split in Linux like this:
split -b 2147483647 bigfile.ext bigfile.ext.part
This will create .partaa, .partab, and so on. They can be combined later with cat like this:
cat *.part* > bigfile.ext
Are there limits to filename length?
Yes. If there are any files over 64 characters long, they'll be readable in Linux but may not be in Windows.
Solution: Put files with really long names in a ZIP or 7Z or TAR or whatever, and have the archive filename as something under 64 characters in length.
Are there limits to the number of subfolders?
Yes. Go beyond 8 levels deep and there may be problems reading the data afterward in Windows.
The solution is the same as for long filenames, just put stuff in a ZIP/TAR/7Z/whatever where you can have as many levels as you want.
"Use UDF" is not the answer to everything
There's the possibility your data will be bouncing around from Windows to Linux and maybe even to macOS or vice versa. That being the case, you want to write the "most compatible" disc you can.
To achieve this, you are always better off simplifying things by writing just-under-2GiB archive files without really deep subfolder levels.
And remember, with 7-Zip you can split archives during creation into 2GiB chunks. Or if you really want to play it safe, split into 1GiB chunks. When you do this, if the original file is bigfile.ext, 7-Zip will create bigfile.ext.001, bigfile.ext.002, and so on. Double-clicking the .001 will open up the whole archive as long as all the files are in the same folder.
Said again: Video files are not worth writing to DVD
For most people, video is by far the file type that takes up the most space.
PDF, DOC, JPG, MP3 and things like that? Sure, DVD can handle that (or DVD+DL if you need larger capacity). But big-big MP4? No.
It is better to use 1TB SD cards for that stuff. Not the USB sticks. Use the cards. They're slower, but more reliable. There are also 2TB SD cards if you have the money for them. The best deal going currently is, of course, the 512GB SD.
How long do SD cards last? I read over a bunch of Amazon reviews get an answer on this. Based on what I read, the general consensus is about 3 years with heavy use, and around 4 to 5 years with light use. The card may last a lot longer than that, but to play it safe, assume a 3-5 year lifespan.
Also remember that USB SD card readers are cheap if you need one to read or write to your card from a PC USB port (or phone for that matter).
It is weird but cool writing data like I used to over 10 years ago
DVD is old and there's no denying that, but it's also the cheapest way to get reliable long term data storage (as long as it's not video since most modern video won't fit on a disc).
As I've been burning my discs, yeah I've had some feelings of nostalgia. In fact, I'm using the same soft cases (like these) that I used over a decade ago since I never threw them out. My cases are really old, but hey, they still work.
If you're asking, "So... you're just going to store these discs and then just copy them to new discs in 7 or 10 year's time?"
Unless something better comes along, yep.
I don't do cloud storage, tape storage is too expensive, using NAS is tedious (not to mention sometimes LOUD), and flash is flaky.
Believe me, I considered all the other methods. DVD, as old as it may be, is the best long term data storage option.
i bought a yamaha pacifica
If you took a Fender Stratocaster and tastefully modified it for modern play, what you would end up with is the Pacifica. This is the guitar Yamaha can build that Fender can't because they're not "allowed" to.
I'll explain.
Pacifica comes in many flavors that I'll detail in a moment, but just to get this out of the way, what I bought was the PAC112VM model.
Why I bought it
There were two main reasons.
The first is the fact on both the PAC112V (rosewood board version) and PAC112VM models, the tone knob is a push-pull to split the humbucker to single-coil.
I was watching videos about this guitar, saw a person demoing it who then pulled the tone knob, to where my eyes widened and I thought WHOA THERE, WHAT IS THAT? I learned yes, single-coil can be had at the bridge side, and that right there is what put this guitar on my radar. If it didn't have that very specific feature, I never would have bought it.
Long time readers of mine know that I don't like HSS guitars, but I like this one because it's arguably the only guitar that gets it right.
The second reason is the neck. It is not like the Pacifica guitars of the past with that skinny neck garbage. This one has some actual shoulder to it. If you look at the measurements, it's close to Fender but with changes that make it easier to play.
Fender American Stratocaster Pro neck has a scale length of 25.5", zero-fret neck width of 1.6875", 22 narrow-tall frets, 1st fret neck thickness of 0.82", 12th fret neck thickness of 0.92", and 9.5" fingerboard radius.
Yamaha Pacifica PAC112VM neck has a scale length of 25.5", zero-fret neck width of 1.6141", 22 medium jumbo frets, 1st fret neck thickness of 0.82", 12th fret neck thickness of 0.90", and 13.75" fingerboard radius.
The zero-fret neck width (a.k.a. neck width at nut) is a little easier to visualize when stated in millimeters. Fender Am Pro neck is 42.8mm and Yamaha Pacifica PAC112V is 41mm. In other words, a 1.8mm difference.
If the Fender neck kept its thickness but had larger fret wire and its fingerboard flattened to allow for lower string action along with much easier string bending without fretting out, that's the Pacifica neck.
And there are also some other things about the Pacifica that make it Fender-esque.
Body is alder. Not basswood. Not poplar. Alder.
Pickups are all alnico V magnets, hence why "V" is in the model name.
Knobs are metal, knurled and tightened into place with a side screw, just like on the Fender Telecaster.
Most Pacifica guitars are under 8 pounds total. They usually weigh in around 7.4 to 7.8. In other words, about the same as a Fender Strat.
And you get all this for less than the price of a Squier Classic Vibe.
Speaking of which, there are three things about the PAC112V where cost cutting is seen. Electronics use mini pots, the nut is plastic and the tremolo block is the skinny type. However, all of that can be swapped out easily...
...or you just get a higher level model Pacifica so you don't have to mod anything. If you were to get any model with PAC612 in the name, now you get Seymour Duncan pickups, Grover locking tuners, TUSQ nut and a Wilkinson bridge - and it still costs less than a Mexico made Fender Player Stratocaster.
Above that, things get expensive with Pacifica Standard Plus and the top tier Pacifica Professional.
Why I went with the PAC112VM
There was a demo model available, the discounted price was good, and I went for it. The only difference between the PAC112V and PAC112VM is the latter has a maple fingerboard, hence why "M" is at the end of the model name. And yes, the all-maple neck is two-piece with the fingerboard laid down on top with no skunk stripe on the back. This is not a Fender, after all.
I was originally totally set on getting the PAC112V, but then I went to check the maple board models before making the buy, and the demo was there. It has very small cosmetic issues due to it being an in-store guitar people picked up and played before I bought it. These little cosmetic things didn't bother me, so I bought the demo instead since it was cheaper than a new PAC112V.
Fender can't make a guitar like this
I said above that Fender isn't "allowed" to make a guitar like this, and I'll explain that now.
Any time Fender strays from tradition, people don't buy. This is why the recently released Indonesia-made Fender Standard Stratocaster pretty much follows what the Mexico Standard used to be. True, manufacturing location has changed, the body is poplar, the bridge is 2-point and not 6-screw, and the neck doesn't have a skunk stripe on the rear. But in all honesty it's really not that far off from what used to come out of Mexico.
Let's say Fender changed just one thing one the Indonesian Standard, the fingerboard radius. The radius is changed from 9.5" to 12" and everything else stays the same so the price doesn't change.
If Fender did that, people would freak out even if it made for a better playing guitar and not buy it. That being the case, Fender almost never changes anything for standard production run models, because that's too much of a profit risk.
The only time Fender gets a little (and only a little) wiggle room is for highfalutin models where it's okay to stray from tradition, such as the Fender Ultra II Stratocaster HSS. That model has a 10"-14" compound radius fingerboard, and oh, look at that, it also has S-1 switching to split the humbucker...
...and that's literally the only Fender model with a flatter fingerboard with HSS pickup configuration where the humbucker has a coil-split feature.
What about other brands?
At the price point of the Yamaha PAC112V, the Ibanez AZES40 has a thing call the "alter switch" (seen easily between the volume and tone knobs) that gets you all the single-coil tones EXCEPT bridge-side which is all humbucker, all the time.
The same thing is going on with the Ibanez AZ22S1F. Yes, great looking guitar (it truly does look really nice), but again, you can't get single-coil-alone at the bridge side, but can get everything else. And at this point you've gone significantly above what the PAC112V sells for, so you might as well go a little further and get a PAC612 Pacifica model.
It really is all about the Pacifica neck
As I've said before, it's the neck that makes or breaks a guitar. If the neck isn't good, the guitar is bad.
Amazingly, the lowest cost Pacifica, PAC012, still has the same neck shape. However, on that bottom tier model, the body is mahogany, the pickups have ceramic magnets, and the electronics to split the humbucker to single-coil aren't present. But still, that neck with its great shape and flat fingerboard radius is there.
It took me a while before I finally found something other than Fender and Squier that could truly suit me. I wanted a Strat style body shape, the SSS pickup layout, a neck that wasn't skinny while at the same time having a fingerboard radius that is flat, and have it be reasonably priced.
Yamaha Pacifica is that guitar. True, it's HSS, but it's thankfully a lower-output humbucker that can be switched to get SSS tones easily with one pull of the tone knob. It's a tastefully modernized Stratocaster, with the modernization applied only where it needs to be. That, and pretty much nothing else touches it concerning what it has for its price point.
where did the lights on usb flash drives go?
This may be a small thing, but it was mighty convenient.
Flash drives. Tons of them are out there. Easy, cheap data storage, except something is missing that they had before...
...an indicator light.
It used to be that nearly every single flash drive had a small LED light on it. The old SanDisk cruzer used to have a rather large orange light that was quite nice. When it was in use, quicker blinking. When idling, the light faded in and out slowly.
The USB 2.0 versions of the SanDisk cruzer Glide had a smaller red indicator light on them. Again, same as the orange where fast blinking indicated data transfer and slower fade-in/out indicated idling.
The best flash drive light indicator ever - even if it was slightly annoying sometimes - were certain versions of the SanDisk cruzer mini. The LED was a bright blue that looked like a mod but it wasn't, blinking rapidly for every bit of data transferring in or out. Also, the placement of the light was right on the end so there was no way you could miss it. It was fantastic.
The lights need to come back
If you go all the way back to the earliest PCs, they all had drive indicator lights. Even on PCs without hard drives, the floppy drive(s) had an indicator light. For hard drives, that light was always red in color, and it absolutely had to be there so you know whenever any drive activity was going on. It sucked whenever you didn't have that light.
On other drives, same thing. CD-ROM or DVD drive, Zip drive (remember those?), or whatever it was, they all had activity indicator lights.
To make it perfectly clear: AN ON-SCREEN PROGRESS BAR IS NOT A SUITABLE REPLACEMENT FOR AN ACTIVITY LIGHT. Why? If you have an app or program in front, guess what? You can't see that activity going on with physical storage media in the background.
On-screen progress bars are most useful for things NOT local to your computer (such as loading progress). But for local storage media, yes, a light is needed to show activity. This is especially true for large file transfers. If anything, you need that light to let you know when the file transfer is DONE.
Want lights? Two brands still have them.
PNY Turbo Attache, at least for the 256GB USB 3 version, does have an activity light on it. The older SanDisk cruzer Glide USB 2.0 also has an indicator light on it, and does have 256GB versions available. It's an old model, but you can still get it new and sealed at the time I write this. Yes, USB 2.0 is slow, but if you want that indicator light on a SanDisk, that's what you have to get. And no, the USB 3.0 version of the SanDisk does not have the light, even though it looks identical to the 2.0 version.
skype is shutting down
Skype is set to shut down this year, and this made me think of all the internet specific communications stuff I've used over the decades. Yes, it's decades at this point.
In some respects, I miss how internet communications used to be, but it's not like I'd go back to the old ways.
When is Skype shutting down? May 5, 2025. Why? Because Teams exists and Microsoft wants you to use that instead. Fair enough.
It's been years since I used Skype, but when I did, I actually did have a paid subscription because at the time it was one of the cheapest ways to have a reliable phone line through internet. And oh yeah, I used it regularly.
The exact reason I stopped using Skype is because my VoIP box broke. I had this VoIP box (which I think I bought direct from Skype themselves?) that I connected a plain Panasonic cordless phone to, and I loved that thing. Great handset, great battery life, comfortable, awesome ringer, awesome speakerphone. One day I went to unplug the VoIP box out of a power strip to move it elsewhere, and the damned thing cracked apart. Really cheap plastic. The VoIP box, not the Panasonic. There wasn't any other cheap "Skype compatible" thing I could find for sale to plug my cordless phone base into, and the one I bought was out of production, so I switched over to wired headset on my PC. I hated this because that Panasonic phone was so much nicer. I dealt with that for a little while until I didn't need the Skype line anymore, canceled the service and haven't used it since. I was really sick of that stupid headset by that point.
Do I want to go back to communications like that? Nope, although I could if I wanted to, albeit in a different way. Bluetooth phones exist that are very much like the old cordless phones. You pair one to your smartphone and then you can place/receive calls with it. Some have the ability to add additional phones so you can have handsets throughout the house (as in one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the garage, and so on).
Skype was actually the first thing I ever used where I heard high-quality audio when speaking to somebody else for Skype-to-Skype "calls". That was weird, because I was very used to standard phone audio, which was 8000Hz to 12000Hz. To hear that bumped up over 22000Hz was different. Even now, every time I hear that high-quality audio on some smartphone calls, I still find it weird.
Then there was the whole instant messenger thing that Skype had. I never cared that much for it. It worked, and that's pretty much all I can say about it.
And on the subject of instant messaging, nina.chat exists that has literally brought back the old AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Instant Messenger, obviously run on different servers now. While that is a giant dose of nostalgia, it's one of those things where yeah, okay, use the old software, get sick of it quick and then never use it again.
If there were a retro community built around using those old IM programs, okay, maybe that would be something worth investing time into. But that really doesn't exist from what I've seen.
Questions also come into my head. Why bother with an IM client for chat? Why not just use IRC, which can be used in an instant messenger style? For retro computing in general, wouldn't you want as many computers as possible to be able to use it, regardless of age or OS? Even text-only terminals can use IRC with software like Irssi.
I just don't like the idea of messaging being "tied" to a specific client. And that brings me back to Skype. From what I remember, it's like I said, I did not care much for the way Skype did messaging. Yes, it worked, but I remember the client really have a problem keeping settings where I had to reset things over and over. That got annoying real quick. And it was also annoying that to send/receive messages, "must have Skype client". AIM, YIM, ICQ and heck, even MSN wasn't like that. You could use alternate clients with those, BUT NOT FOR SKYPE. Stupid.
Skype was a thing, and soon to be not a thing.
And as far as retro instant messaging goes, IRC is absolutely the best choice just solely for the fact it works on any computer, even if what you use has no GUI at all.
creating an audio cd in 2025
Oh yes, we're going here. I've been going all-in with learning how to do things with optical media lately, so I went ahead and acquired some CD-R discs.
You might be asking why I would even bother with this. I'll answer that.
This is not so much for the '90s nostalgia factor (although I will admit that's a small part of it), but rather because CD is just so darned reliable. And there's another reason I'll mention in a bit.
Before getting into the audio stuff, some quick notes on data stuff first.
Out of all computer media there is, only two will last the test of time. CD-R and ultrium tape cartridges. The tape itself is really expensive, and an ultrium tape drive will instantly give you massive sticker shock.
CD-R, even at just 700MB/disc, is the best thing you could use to store important documents and photos for about 10 years if not longer. An external USB optical drive is cheap as are CD-R discs. When all the hard drives and USB flash sticks fail, CD-R will still be working.
And don't worry, there will still be optical drives in the future. There are super nerds right now successfully recovering data from storage media of the late 1970s. If they can recover data from a half-century ago, you'll still be able to read your CD-R data in 2035.
Okay, on to the audio stuff.
In Windows, the best tool is Windows Media Player in Windows 10, and that's pretty much all you need to know there. Fairly easy to figure out.
In Linux, three things are required. FFMPEG to encode proper WAV files for CD audio, Brasero to burn and/or make BIN/CUE files, and VLC for playback to test out the disc once burned.
If you don't have FFMPEG, Brasero and VLC installed, install those first.
Get all your audio ready. It doesn't matter if it's video or audio files. Could be WEBM, MP4, MOV, OGG, MP3, whatever. Just dump everything you want to burn to disc in a folder.
Navigate to that folder in Terminal and run this:
mkdir for-cd;for i in *;do ffmpeg -i "$i" -ar 44100 "${i%.*}.wav" -y;mv *.wav for-cd -v;done
This will a) create subfolder for-cd, b) make WAV versions of all the files at a proper 44.1kHz, c) move all the WAV versions to subfolder for-cd.
Launch Brasero and start an "Audio Project", which is for a traditional audio CD.
Drag-and-drop all the WAV files in the for-cd subfolder into the Brasero window.
Do two things to each track.
Right-click the track to add the song title and band/artist name.
After that, right-click the track again and select "Insert a Pause".
Doing this will insert a 2-second pause between that track and the next one.
Add title/artist info for every track, then add a 2-second pause for every track except the last one since that's the end of the disc.
At the bottom of Brasero, your disc title is there. Change it to whatever you want, such as "My Custom Mix Disc".
There is a drop-down at the bottom of Brasero. You can either burn direct-to-disc right then and there, or you can burn an image file. The latter option makes a BIN and CUE.
If you are the type that prefers to directly edit the CUE file with a text editor before burning a disc, yes, you can do that. I specifically mention this for those that still prefer to use the command line utility cdrdao (which literally means CD-R Disc-At-Once). Some Linux users really like that utility but hate the process of making the BIN and CUE files. Well, just have Brasero make the BIN and CUE, edit the CUE to suit, then burn the disc with cdrdao afterward. Job done.
Or, if you don't want to deal with any of that, just have Brasero burn the disc.
Once the disc is burned, that's when you launch VLC to test it out. Insert the burned disc in the drive, launch VLC, and at top left click Media > Open Disc. A new smaller window will appear. Click Audio CD, then the Play button at bottom.
If all went well, your audio CD will start playing and you'll see all the CD Text stuff you input in Brasero for each track.
So what was that other reason for using CD-R I was talking about?
The other reason CD audio is being sought after again is because of cars and annoyances with smartphones.
Want to know how many cars were made with CD audio players? Millions. How do I know? Years ago, I owned a nearly-base spec 1986 Chevrolet Camaro, and it had a factory installed General Motors radio with CD player. It was just single-disc, but the point is it had one even on a 1986 model when CD was still a very new thing.
Cars with CD players were around for about 35 years. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if a few 2025 models still offered it.
The smartphone annoyances I'm talking about where music playback is concerned is that it's not as simple as 1) pick song, 2) play, 3) adjust volume. An app has to be launched, maybe a login is required if it's a streaming thing, and so on.
With CD, it literally is a 1-2-3 process. Pick song, play, adjust volume. And pretty much all car CD players have a shuffle feature, so the songs don't have to be played in order.
How many songs can fit on an audio CD? 80 minutes of music. If each song is 3 minutes in length, that means 26 songs can fit on the disc. If you want to get really technical about it, the maximum number of audio tracks that can be written to CD is 99. You could burn 99 "songs" to CD if they were all 0.8 seconds in length each.
Before you ask, yes, Brasero will show how much you can fit on the disc before you burn it, so you don't have to guess.
Given the fact the majority of car owners drive a car over 10 years old, it most likely has a CD player. It's right there, ready to be used. Nothing to plug in, no fumbling about with wires or connectors or anything like that. Insert a disc and start the music.
CD players in cars are easy. Easy is good. You just have to make the discs.