Should I go.. HD or DVD?

**shampoo** · December 30th, 2003, 04:15 PM

I'm stuck here with a little problem.. I am out of space on my hard drive. I have a little money to spend.. Just enough for either a decent Hard Drive or a decent DVD burner.. I really want to keep the things I store safe, and I want to keep it all as long as I can. These files are very important for my business. So should I go for a new hard drive, or should I go with a DVD burner and copy my files onto DVDs?

I have heard that DVDs will wear out over time and eventually become un-readable, and are also easily scratched (destroyed). I have also heard that hard drives fail at random and it happens to quite a few people. My corcern with a new hard drive is that I won't be able to store unlimited things.. I will be restriced to as much space as the hard drive can hold. My concern with the DVD burner is that my DVDs will become un-readable (or is that only CDs?) after a while and I might lose all my files. However, a hard drive is more reliable I think (please prove me wrong on that), but with DVDs I can store as much information as I need with little cost.

**HeadBand** · December 30th, 2003, 04:19 PM

unless the files are huge go with a cd burner and a smaller harddrive

dvd media is very expensive and its really unnessacery to get a dvd burner unless you want to back up your movies

**John Prophet** · December 30th, 2003, 04:19 PM

I dont think you have to worry too much about dvd's wearing out etc....if you are worried about that..make 2 copies...keep one at the bank in a safe deposit box,lol.

Someone said once "one backup is like no backup", lol.

The issue with two hard drives is...what if the comp takes a big power surge and blows both drives?

A good backup deal is to have one comp backed up to another comp PLUS have important stuff stored on dvd/cd.

**shampoo** · December 30th, 2003, 04:27 PM

Thank you for the input. I have decided to go with either a CD or DVD burner.

Can you burn normal CDs and DVDs with a DVD burner or only DVDs? If I do decide to get a DVD burner I might use it for home movies and bigger things, but I also don't want to spend the extra money to buy DVDs for the smaller things which is my main priority right now. If you can do both on a DVD burner then I'm sold.

**shampoo** · December 30th, 2003, 06:09 PM

Nevermind.. I looked it up and found a good answer.

Now I just have to decide which DVD burner to get.

Once again.. Any suggestions are great. I'm looking to spend around 150-

**rourkchris** · December 31st, 2003, 06:35 AM

How about the Lite-On LDW-811S? It burns both formats DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW. Burns DVD+ at 8X and DVD- at 4x. Plays DVDs at 12x, reads regular CD-ROMs at 40x, burns CD-Rs at 40x, and CD-RWs at 24x. Fastest- overall -burner out there that I'm aware of. Very nice that it burns CD-Rs so fast(40x). Makes it very practical for replacing CDRW drives. Costs $142.00 at Newegg.