Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Use Optical Media?

The other day at an event, public relation officials were handing out press kit (it usually contains everything the company announced, photos from the event, and contact information of the company) to journalists. When I reached office and opened the kit, I found a CD in it. Which was weird because it's been two to three years since I had a computer with an optical drive. And all these years I didn't need one. Which brings up the question: Does your work require dealing with CDs and DVDs anymore? An anonymous reader asks the same question: I still use optical discs for various backup purposes, but recently I developed doubts as to the reliability of the media to last a reasonable amount of time. I have read a review on Amazon of the TDK DVDs, in which somebody described losing 8000 (sic!) DVDs of data after 4 years of storage. I promptly canceled my purchase of TDKs. So, do you still use opticals for back-up -- Blu-Rays, DVDs, CDs? -- and if so, how do you go about it?I do buy Blu-Ray discs of movies, though. So my life isn't optical disc free yet. What about yours?

Comments

We burn a ton of DVD's every week

[gurps_npc]

I work for a law firm. We need to send data out all the time. When possible we FTP it. But for many jobs we need permanent record, so we use a mix of DVD's and hard drives.

For large jobs, we use Hard Drives. Anything less than 10 GB, we burn DVDs. We do it all the time.

Also, while I don't buy laptops or tablets with DVD players, I insist on every Desktop computer I buy to have one.

I will do so just for the ability to play my old movies and TV shows.

Yes, for now...

[RogueyWon]

I have a BD-RE drive in my home desktop. It doesn't get much use, to be honest, but I'm not quite ready to make the jump away from having an optical drive just yet.

I've got a bunch of old backups still on optical discs; everything from CD-Rs to Blu-Rays. Admittedly, this is only low priority "nice to have" stuff. Anything it would actually hurt me if I lost (which is only a couple of hundred megs of data when I get right down to it) is backed up by other, more reliable methods.

I do still have a handful of games on disc that I never bought . Some of these I'm clearly never going to play again and could easily throw out, but there are a couple, such as Warcraft 3, that I'd still like the option to play from time to time.

I will (very occasionally) watch a DVD or Blu-Ray movie on my PC rather than TV. This is particularly true in the summer months; my living room, where the TV lives, can get brutally hot, while my study, where the desktop lives, is cool and shady.

In addition to the above, while boot-from-USB is a lot more reliable than it used to be, I've still had more issues with it than boot-from-optical-disc. So I still like to have an optical drive for those occasions when I need to boot from external media.

Medical information

[phorm]

This is pretty common for medical records too. When the hospital gives you results of cancer screening/X-Rays, it's often a bunch of files or images/videos on a DVD

Government Networks

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

USB sticks have been effectively banned on DoD networks. We regularly use CD/DVD media to burn software and patches to then transfer it to the classified networks. The optical drives on the high side are almost always read-only to avoid issues with transport of classified off the servers.

Yard Sales

[rickb928]

I buy a lot of older CDs at yard sales to fill in my collections, though others are figuring this out.

- CHEAP.

- No DRM, subscriptions, licensing. These are MINE, all MINE! Bahahahahah!

- Rip them to my music services.

- Save them to both my archives.

- Long-term storage of the discs.

- And it's a cheap way to buy old music. Oh, I mentioned that.

Media and taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a software large company, and we still ship software on optical media. Of course we also provide downloads, which is what customers actually use. But in some circumstances we are still required to ship physical media. Why? Because of the tax implications!

Re: Archival grade

[jabberw0k]

the pedants who keep making this argument are actually trying to get everyone to behave as if English was a dead language in some misguided notion that they're protecting it.

Contrariwise, we are trying to actively change English to be better. I will protest the use of "orientate" (should be "orient" just as "inform" not "informate" is correct) and the awkward and irritating Los Angeles-style "I was on the 10" instead of the better "I was on I-10" (or Route 10, or Highway 10, or Interstate 10) for the same reason: if English is a living language, we can improve it just as much as we can dumb it down.

Re: Archival grade

[Immerman]

I assume you don't realize that "begs the question" actually originated as a mistranslation of a latin phrase better translated as "assuming the premise" - as such, the original usage is clearly flawed, and the modern usage actually better reflects the literal meaning of the words. In fighting against it, you're actually fighting to preserve a 400 year old language-butchering error.