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I was browsing a technical store's website and came across some DVDs. On sale. You'd need an optical drive to use them, unless you use them to decorate your walls
If you do use them, what do you use them for and why do you not just use hard drives, SSDs or USB thumb drives instead?
This is not a hate post. My whole existence is living in the 90's, so... :P
We have a spindle of CD-Rs. I wish it was DVDs! We'd have a use for DVDs! It's WAY easier to just burn a Linux ISO than it is to faff about with a USB stick. Less convoluted to boot from, too (hybrid ISOs are a bit cursed; it doesn't matter if you're doing the usual pure "overwrite the entire stick" thing, but it's not great if you're also using the drive for other stuff – that's not an issue with DVD[-+]Rs, they come in packs and each individual disc is cheap enough it's one disc per thing).
Wee do have a couple OpenBSD install CDs. We don't use them enough to be super useful. But a Debian install DVD? I'd use that.
-- Frost
I still have some and I burned music on them.
Backing up my movie collection to hard copies mostly. I also make mix cds for my friends if i find out they sill use cds. I got an external read/write drive in 8th grade and its still kicking butt. I also have a 360 on my retro shelf, but i mostly just use the external drive or local files.
Yes, I use them to store data that I just need to read. I also rip my DVDs
No, and I no longer have any optical disk readers. My last disk reader was on an XBOne and that’s long gone
I used optical disks almost entirely for music and video content but gave up once convenience of streaming media caught up. The thing is I don’t care about owning any. If don’t really have music or movies I like listening/watching over and over so buying doesn’t make sense. My comparison to streaming is broadcast. I’m paying $20/mon for essentially radio but without the inane chatter, ads, and unrelenting repeat of pop music.
Edit: in response to another comment - even for operating systems, I have gigabit fiber so download it as needed whenever possible
I use them to burn DVD's that I can play on my PS5. I rip discs more than I burn them but sometimes I'll make a copy of a rare disc or an .iso I found online.
BD-Rs for cold storage, they are cheaper than HDDs/SSDs and offer a fast solution to clear up space from existing hot storage without actually getting rid of the data. USB sticks are not suitable for archival, they degrade very soon.
Yep, I'm using m-discs blu ray for storage of some of my data because I'm afraid of bit flips that I can't detect. I had this happen already with images that got destroyed without me noticing.
Too bad they are on the way out...
I have a small library of music CDs, because I liked music before there was an internet. I recently ripped them to .FLACC.
I keep meaning to do this, but do I really want to buy a dvd reader just to try to rip all my older music and movies that I seem to be getting along without?
Actually, a more likely reason is baby pictures. My mom was trying to be forward thinking and sent copies of all the pictures she took of my kids on cd-r or Kodak picture disk. Those are more important
I used to have one of those little joke .exe files called Cupholder. If you clicked on it, it opened the CD drive.
Fuck bud I still use floppy disks. It's damn hard to find a pc with a dedicated floppy drive. Those usb floppy drives fail writing to floppy more often than not.
I have a desktop floppy drive with a USB adapter. It seems to do the job.
Cool! Are floppys still being manufactured? I'd love to make a rescue boot floppy for when I need to do maintenance on my system!
They are not being manufactured anymore but it is still possible to buy new old stock. One guy is trying to keep them in circulation (he owns floppydisk.com) and I found a somewhat recent article that has some good info as well: https://www.raconteur.net/technology/the-floppygeddon-cometh
Yeah I kina lucked out I found a 10 pack of new ones on Amazon about 2 years ago. And recently, while cleaning out an old auto performance shop, there was like 2 or 3 55gal drums full of used and new floppy disks.
Also more recently there was something about Japan finaly upgrading their i.t infrastructure from floppy disks to more modern tech.
Hell apparently they still make cassette tapes for use in prisons because you can't make a shank out of one with the materials they use for them.
Casettes are being reintroduced in the (indie) music industry as well
Yeah it’s really bizarre seeing my teen get excited about buying cassettes and vinyl
I started buying CDs from Japan and on the used market (thank god discogs).
Pretty weird :D
Offsite Backups of Family Photos
Your descendants will thank you! :D
If they can find an optical drive.
I use them for archival backups of personal media.
And why do you prefer this over USB sticks (thar are dirt cheap nowadays)?
A CD-R will retain data longer than a USB stick.
USB sticks don't last as long
Mostly because I already have a burner and two 75-count spindles of blank DVDs.
Sweet! I still haven't started doing offsite physical backups. I do have backups locally and encrypted in a third party cloud, but no physical copies...
physical media has a place with collectors and appreciators and i hope that doesn't ever stop being true
its resistant to censorship and it gives creators a thing that supporters can buy
I have a stack of blank CD-Rs. I mostly bought them for running homebrew and import games on my Dreamcast. Recently I did find some old PC games that wouldn't work under WINE, so I ended up using some of the CD-Rs to reinstall Windows XP on my Thinkpad T60. That took 8 discs.
I still have a couple DVD drives. They're both disconnected because the PCs they're in both got new motherboards at some point in time without an IDE plug 😅
My stereo still uses CD's, so that's what I use. I have a DVD burner in my PC, and a spindle of blank CD-R's and anothet of blank DVD-R's. I use the former to burn music CD's for my stereo, and the latter for extra backup whenever I'm about to upgrade my hardware (once every 10 eyars or so). This is on addition to a NAS and an external drive. I just figured that the disks would have the best chance to be read once I get a new desktop.
(I also saw the mention of floppies in the discussion. I have an old Win98 machine - for gaming only these days - with an internal floppy and zip drives. Those media easily outlast CD's: I can still read almost all oc them, even though some are over 30 years old.)
Why not just get a Bluetooth receiver (or a raspberry pi if you want true lossless) and stream from the NAS instead?
Because my stereo is so old that it only accepts tape or CD as an input. No bluetooth or even USB stick. However, it works, and it's adequate for my humble needs, so I haven't considered replacing it yet.
Those look good, they are gamingfavoriten!
Why use CDs in this day and age ?
I'll occasionally make a DVD for a friend of a friend who doesn't have a device that can play files directly.
Other than that, I don't use em. Could probably benefit from storing stuff on them as backups though.
who doesn't have a device that can play files directly.
In the 2026th year of our Lord and Saviour ?
Not for them. It's still 1990
Only reason would be when buying music cds. Besides that: None really
Rarely; I think the last time was a live CD to try Linux on an older computer
I haven't burned a dvdr in years, maybe more than a decade. Last time was a linux installation disk, I'm not sure if it was because I was having troubles creating a bootable usb for that distro, or a PC that for some reason was refusing to boot from a usb, but I was glad of having still some blank disks lying around.
Edit: I've had to go check, I still have a bunch, most of them are rewritable, lol
Occasionally I will use a blank CD or DVD to burn something like a game I obtained through less than ideal means. Otherwise, I tend to use them less than I should. But that would require me to find more uses for them.
I got a whole stack of blank DVDs a couple years ago because the student government at the college I attend was just getting rid of them. Probably was gonna throw them away if nobody picked them up, so I did. Also got some clear, see through sleeves as well.
Edit:
This post also made me remember that an art student used a bunch of discs and a teddy bear in a 3D art piece that gets a negative reaction from me. Every time I pass by it in the library, I hate it, but admit it's great art considering it gets such a strong emotion out of me.
Yes, I have a music CD collection and a CD player in my car I use semi-frequently. I don't use discs for movies though.
The pedant in me cannot let slide that your title talks of compact discs but the image is of write-once blank DVDs.
But no, I don't use any form of 4.7" optical media very often. The last time I used the optical drive in this computer was to watch a DVD that I didn't want to go downstairs and watch on the TV. That must be a good few months ago now.
As to why I even have such a drive - long, boring story. I had assumed that if I ever had need of one, I'd just take the one out of my old PC. When that time came, the newer PC refused to boot with that drive installed. (Imagine, if you will, being in that situation, and the ensuing horror and frustration.)
It then made sense to buy a different one to troubleshoot and cover that potential need. And I haven't bothered to uninstall it after "testing".
Edit: Sometimes I a word.
As a medium for media, yes
I still have a ton because I have working old consoles and a CD player in my car still, but my PC hasn't even had a front bay for a CD/DVD drive in over a decade so I haven't been burning any for a while.
