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Time to Purchase a DVD-R?

Posted by Cliff on from the higher-density-removable-media dept.

Evanrude asks: "With DVD writers having significantly come down in price over the past year more companies are coming out with their version of the DVD-R. My company has a large file archive of documents and data that don't necessarily need to be stored on read/write media, but need to be kept online. I want to accomplish this with online DVD storage but is this the right way to go? Who has the best value with the most features of all the DVD-R's on the market? What are some things to look for and things to avoid when purchasing a DVD-R? Is it even time to purchase one, or should I wait another six months?"

3 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Wait a little longer. by mesozoic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DVD burners will go the same way as CD burners. There may be a bit more competition over formats (since it's a lot more obvious how much of a cash cow DVD burning is going to be for corporations), but eventually they will become fairly inexpensive. Give it at least six more months, if not a year or so, before you consider making DVD burners part of your company's storage strategy.

  2. You said it yourself... by unitron · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "...more companies are coming out with their version of the DVD-R."

    As someone once said, that's the great thing about standards, there are so many of them. You might want to wait and let the dust settle rather than risk a heavy investment in a possible orphan format. Already HP and a couple of other makers are weasling on drives that were supposed to be software upgradeable to record more than one DVD-R or RW format, but it turns out it's not going to be that simple and the hardware will have to be replaced.

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  3. Re:DVD still not up to Par by spiral · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > why don't you guys just buy a few HDs?

    Great idea. All they'd need then is some sort of terabyte backup system. Do you recommend CDs, DVDs or tape?

    This keeps coming up again and again. No matter how cheap HDs get, they just don't have the durability, portability, or lifetime of "real" offline storage. Sadly, backup technology just isn't keeping up with HD capacities. When >1GB drives first came out, you could get 20GB tapes. Now that we've got 100GB drives, the world needs a TB archive media.

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