Compact Disc (CD) and DVD (the meaning of which is apparently in dispute…some say DVD stands for Digital Video Disc, whiles others say it stands for Digital Video Disc, while others still say it doesn’t stand for anything….it is just DVD) have along been a favorite for storing information for the long term.

In the beginning, CDs and DVDs were the only cost effective instruments for holding a lot of data, since they were capable of holding roughly 720 megabytes and 4.2 gigabytes of data, respectively). However, the cost and storage capacity of USB Flash Drives have so improved over the years that it is making sense to use those devices instead.

Some of the attractive features of a CD and/or DVD are:

• Extremely low price
• Long “shelf life” (the data does not deteriorate very quickly over time)
• Ubiquity (meaning that nearly every computer nowadays has a CD/DVD drive)
• All modern backup software packages support writing to CD and/or DVD

Even today, these venerable storage media are an excellent choice when you need to make frequent backups that can not be overwritten. That is, if each week you make a backup of your data, but you cannot simply overwrite your previous week’s data (you need to keep a history of each week), then a CD or DVD is an excellent choice.

However, if you find that you can simply keep 4 weeks worth of backups to satisfy your backup needs, you may do better to purchase four USB Flash Drives and simply use a different one each week.

No matter what, CDs and DVDs are so cheap, versatile and effective that they will be around for some time to come.

Of course, to make use of CDs/DVDs as a backup storage medium, you need two things. Namely, some blank media and a CD/DVD drive. These are easily attainable from most computer/electronic stores and for convenience we provide you with some links below where you can select and have them delivered right to your door.