I gotta throw my 2 cents worth in here.
I've been a long time member of the site at
http://.club.cdfreaks.com. If you want to know just about all there is to know about optical disk drives and writers, this is a great resource.
Absolutely, the afformentioned Taiyo Yuden "T02" media, is about the finest in the world. The only rival to that are the new PAPA spindles (50 peice) of the 16X +R Verbatim (MCC004). For more information about these disks, visit the link I just posted and do some searches.
That having been said, and it having already been said that no backup is 100% fail-proof, optical disks are far less reliable than magnetic media is. (IE, a hard disk) Redundancy is our friend though. Graham put it best. If the shows are seeded and distributed among many users, they shall not, in all probability, be lost. You can create that same sort of redundancy at home too though.
I use optical disks to DISTRIBUTE shows, but everything I have resides on two seperate hard drives, and this is bar none, the safest way to back up your data. Think about it, even though the shows are available from other users, do you really want to have to eat up a ton of bandwidth to download them all again in the event that a disk fails? Granted, if you back up to DVD's, all your shows are obviously not on one disk, and in fact, you really should have two copies of each disk anyway. One copy you put back on a spindle and keep it in a cool dark closet, and the other you use for day to day use. Should your day to day disk fail, you can always dig out your archived disk.
BUT... Hard disks are pretty reasonable these days. 500 Gig Seagate drives can be had for about $100, and will probably put all your shows in one place that is ~oh so easy~ to organize and access. Throw that drive into an external case for around $20 and you have great portability too. Further, if you go the same route I have, you can store that second drive off site, as in a friend or relitive's house, just in case of the truely unspeakable catastrophy, such as a fire, where everything on site is lost.
It costs more, but I'll take quality hard disk storage over optical media any day of the week!
JT
No members have liked this post.