What CD's or DVD's should you store your precious digital photos on?

Question

or should you keep them on an external hard drive? If you store yours on CD's and DVD's, what quality should they be? will the standard ones at target or best buy suffice for years and years? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hard drives will fail at some point. It is fine to have working copies of your photos on a hard drive, but don't use the hard drive to archive your precious photos.

DVDs are supposed to have a greater lifespan than CDs. It is best to make a duplicate copies of your DVD or CD and store them in different locations, perhaps in a lock box at the bank where the environmental conditions are controlled.

The bargain brand disks can fail early. I have seen this many times in the late 1990s. This has been more of a problem with early CDs in my experience. Many people highly rate Taiyo Yuden CDs and DVDs for archival purposes. You normally need to mail order T.Y. disks.

Answer 2

If they are strictly for storage purposes to be viewed on your computer at a later time, then DVD-R is the way to go. 4.7GB DVDs versus 700MB CD. That's 7 times more storage.

While external hard drives store more, hard drives die, sectors get corupted and vulnerable to viruses. DVDs can only get scratched. As long as they are stored in a binder or DVD case, you are good.

As for brands, I have been using Memorex for years. On occassion, I will buy Sony or Imation depending on the sales. Memorex can be as cheap as $0.17 per DVD. Regular price is $0.30 per DVD. While this sounds expensive, the cheaper ones are unreliable.