Blank Blu-ray discs have had their heyday and unlike tape, it is unlikely that they will survive the rapid drop in price of solid state drives and hard disk drives as both media close the gap between optical and magnetic/silicon-based technologies.
The cheapest 25GB BD-R right now costs $20.95 for a 50-disc spindle (PlexDisc 633-214 (opens in new tab)); that’s about $0.42 per disc or $16.76 per TB.
In comparison, a 12TB Seagate Exos hard disk drive (opens in new tab) has a price of $24 per TB while a Quantum LTO-7 tape (opens in new tab), reformatted as an M8 media, costs as little as $6.42 per TB.
- These are the best USB Drives (opens in new tab) on the market
- Check out our list of the best secure drives (opens in new tab)
- We curated the best external hard disk drives (opens in new tab) right now
(opens in new tab)Storing conditions for recordable discs can be a bit of an issue, especially if you plan to store more than one Terabyte, although cloud storage services (opens in new tab) can mitigate that risk. Quality control can also be an issue, although based on feedback from Amazon most blank media brands seem to have their fair share of issues.
The other problem is the sheer volume occupied by a spindle of say, 100 discs, which accounts for 2.5TB of data and weighs 1.6Kg. Sure you can get 50GB BD-R, but they are more expensive; plans by Sony and Panasonic to develop a 300GB optical disc (opens in new tab) to replace Blu-ray seem to have gone nowhere near mainstream.
So for now, unless you have under 100GB of data to store or transfer, you might be better off with a cheap USB drive (opens in new tab) (that doesn’t require a separate reader), a cheap external hard disk drive (opens in new tab) or a tape.
- You will need a cloud backup (opens in new tab) service to keep all your precious data safe
