Do you guys actually burn CD/DVD/BDs nowadays?

I just realized I have not burnt a single disk for a long time. At least six months. And the last one I burnt was an Arch Linux ISO to boot from it because, let's face it, I was too lazy to copy my pendrive to the SSD and dd the ISO to the pendrive.

And, also, I barely use the reader functions of my BD drive. Only once in a lifetime if I bork a MKV.

What has been the last time you've used a burner for something that wasn't a bootable disc (firmware update, Linux, etc...)?

I really think these are starting to lose their place in computers with flash drives of ridiculous sizes at ridiculous prices (I think I saw a 64GB Transcend drive for about EUR 30 (USD 35) at Amazon.es).

I do, I use it for burning OS disks. DVDs, though many of them would fit on a CD.
I last used mine for burning a linux mint 13 disk.

Bobnova, those are bootable discs:

txus.palacios said:

What has been the last time you've used a burner for something that wasn't a bootable disc (firmware update, Linux, etc...)?

Click to expand...

I haven't burnt anything that wasn't bootable for as long as I can remember, other than some DVD's for family.

I still use discs for OS installs often times, I have a harder time keeping track of USB installs - they are harder to write on! hah

Yea, Bobn, those are bootables!

Matt, you should give YUMI a try. It's a pretty nice tool for creating multiboot USB drives. thideras made me discover it.

Guess I should have read the post a bit more carefully

Been a while, I think the last one was drivers for my dell mini9, that was.... 4 years ago? 3 years ago?
A long time.

Thanks for the tip. My bootable USB needs are very windows specific - for benchmarking, installing from USB is often MUCH faster than from disc, and it doesn't require another drive with more cables on my messy benching station.

The trickiest part for multiboot windows isntallers is getting the windows xp install to play nice with the vista/7 installers.

i used both cd and dvd's to make copies of my wifes 4d ultrasound lol thats about it, cd's have been replaced by my phone for music in the car, i dont even use them to do installs as only two or 3 of my pc's have odd's anymore they break to often and dont get used enough to brother buying more so i install os's from pen drives.

Bobnova said:

Guess I should have read the post a bit more carefully

Been a while, I think the last one was drivers for my dell mini9, that was.... 4 years ago? 3 years ago?
A long time.

Click to expand...

No worries Bobn, if you look at my post history, you'll find that I'm not a pretty careful reader neither .

I think I'm dropping the BD drive for my next mATX case build...

EDIT: @Matt, I think YUMI can handle a Windows XP installation and a Win7/Vista one. It can't handle two post-Vista installations though, probably because of the EFI folders?

Dont remember the last time I burned a cd. I would burn dvds but my movies on my computer arent dvd files.. Not sure if you can still burn them to a dvd or not. Havent looked into it.

You can transcode movies to DVD. Handbrake can, IIRC.

Thanks.

It's currently doing one of my movie files right now. When I selected the destination to save it, it saved it as mp4.. Is that correct? there was only one other option, I think it was mkv or something like that.

Oh, no, sorry, Handbrake can rip DVDs, it can't author a DVD.
Your best bet is something like ConvertXtoDVD, Nero or anything similar.

Actually, can't your DVD player play mp4?

MKV is Matroska's Video. It's a damn nice container.

Well I realized handbrake wasnt needed. I just put a DVD-R in my drive and it asked if I wanted to burn to it or make a dvd. So i selected make a dvd, now its encoding We will see if it works on my dvd player when its finished. Thanks though

I burn stuff at least once a month.
I don't trust hdd's, flash drives etc, for my only copy of stuff I have collected over the years.
Like others here I also transcode movies for DVD players.
Plus with having hard copies I can feel free to use some of my hdd's for other uses besides storage.

txus.palacios said:

Oh, no, sorry, Handbrake can rip DVDs, it can't author a DVD.
Your best bet is something like ConvertXtoDVD, Nero or anything similar.

Actually, can't your DVD player play mp4?

MKV is Matroska's Video. It's a damn nice container.

Click to expand...

Ya, convertxtodvd works very well for simple video file to DVD conversion. It isn't the most optimal conversion (it wouldn't be suitable for "scene" release quality), but for home use it is a very good quality conversion.

BrotherJohn said:

I burn stuff at least once a month.
I don't trust hdd's, flash drives etc, for my only copy of stuff I have collected over the years.
Like others here I also transcode movies for DVD players.
Plus with having hard copies I can feel free to use some of my hdd's for other uses besides storage.

Click to expand...

Be careful. If you use "maximum" burn speed, the burn quality isn't as good, and if the media you use was not researched ahead of time (cdfreaks used to be good as an authority on the quality of CD/DVD media)... Those disks will likely be good as coasters after a few years. I burnt a lot of CDs and DVDs when I was in college in 2000-2002, stored things safely in nice CD folders, and a few years later almost every disc was bad... I used maximum burn speed and whatever spindle of 100 discs was cheapest at the time. Discs degrade quickly, and should be ripped/reburnt every few years to ensure large files stored on them are still accessible long term.

For long term storage, I'd put it on a HDD that is stored in a moisture safe container for years, and I'd transfer it to a new HDD every few years just to be safe if it was important.

If you don't mind losing the stuff you are trying to save, like if it isn't a big deal, just do whatever is cheap. Otherwise, use HDD's and for $100 on a big drive you can store a lot of stuff with almost 100% chance at still having it 5 years later if the drive saves the data then does nothing but sit in a closet thru that time.

Thumbdrives in a moisture sealed lead box ought to last roughly forever, too.
Moister sealed so it doesn't corrode, lead to block ionizing radiation to prevent bits from being flipped. At that point it should last for the expected lifetime of the flash chip, if it's anything like the flash in my MCUs that's 50-100 years.

Good luck finding a lead box though, you may have to make one. I think I just found my next project.

I only use my DVD drive to install apps, update FW or run tests like MemTest. I watch all movies using software media players, or the Xtreamer. That's why I only use rewritable CDs/DVDs.

In the past week I think it is safe to say that I have burned more DVDs than in the past two years. I'm on holiday in a place with an ancient back projection HDTV that doesn't have D-SUB or digital inputs and so the films which I had carefully stuck on my laptop have all be transcoded to cheap DVDs at overly fast write speeds ;P

On the subject of bad media and write speeds, I have disc after disc of DJ mixes, samples and other music stuff which I burned in college 7-10 years ago and having spent a couple of weeks at my parents during the summer I have found almost all of them readable despite bad media and high burn speeds. In fact, contrary to most people's experience I have not found branded discs to write any more reliably or to last much better than unbranded 'rubbish.'

I.M.O.G. said:

Be careful. If you use "maximum" burn speed, the burn quality isn't as good, and if the media you use was not researched ahead of time (cdfreaks used to be good as an authority on the quality of CD/DVD media)... Those disks will likely be good as coasters after a few years. I burnt a lot of CDs and DVDs when I was in college in 2000-2002, stored things safely in nice CD folders, and a few years later almost every disc was bad... I used maximum burn speed and whatever spindle of 100 discs was cheapest at the time. Discs degrade quickly, and should be ripped/reburnt every few years to ensure large files stored on them are still accessible long term.

For long term storage, I'd put it on a HDD that is stored in a moisture safe container for years, and I'd transfer it to a new HDD every few years just to be safe if it was important.

If you don't mind losing the stuff you are trying to save, like if it isn't a big deal, just do whatever is cheap. Otherwise, use HDD's and for $100 on a big drive you can store a lot of stuff with almost 100% chance at still having it 5 years later if the drive saves the data then does nothing but sit in a closet thru that time.

Click to expand...

Been there, done that. I've lost gigabytes and gigabytes of media because I decided to buy some cheap "Bulpaq" DVDs.

Now, I only buy JVC-branded Taiyo Yuden CDs and DVDs... But the CD spindle is still in mint condition, not even unsealed... And I bought it about 7 months ago...