What's a reliable alternative to optical disc data storage?

I have a bunch of optical discs that store all of my data and I'd like to find a good and reliable alternative. I see SD cards are getting fairly cheap for high capacity storage, would that be a good alternative?
The only thing I don't like is, it's not "permanent". Though SD cards have a write protect switch, I was reading that it could still be bipassed.
So what is your opinion? Is that a good alternative to storing many optical discs?

 

Hard drives will do the job quite well as long as you have backups.

 

Well I'm talking about replacing my optical discs completely. I wouldn't trust a hard drive for that. I have about 23GB of backup data which just fit on 3 dual layer DVD's.
I was thinking of maybe picking up two 32gb SDHC cards and using those primarily for storage, but I don't know how reliable they are. Any ideas?

 

well you could get a RAID 1 external drive set up. Say a 500GB one. It will place 2 500GB drives in a single external box that you can connect by usb/firewire/e sata. There will be 2 identical 500GB drives but only a total of 500GB useable space not 1GB. Everything you put on one drive is automatically mirrord on the second drive so if 1 drive crashes you still got a safe back up and you just buy another drive to replace the broken one and the drives mirror each other again. The chances of both breaking at the same time are about as likely as being hit by lightninig.

 

Of course, if the actual unit is hit by lightning then you're screwed.

 

I use a NAS unit in a RAID. 2 1T drives mirrored holds lots of junk

 

Flash memory is ridiculously expensive. $90 =
1TB HDD (2x500gb)
2TB LTO-4 tape (2x1.6gb)
32GB SDHC
1TB DL DVD (125x8.5gb)

 

Why not? Hard drives have been far more reliable than optical discs in my experience.

 

You can try to go to a higher density optical storage, a.k.a. blue-ray. Right now I wouldn't buy a blue-ray burner but you can ask some friend. If not just buy an external HDD and keep the drive in a safe place until the blue-ray burners are cheaper.

 

Get 2 x 2TB HDD's they can be had on sale for under $120

Keep a mirror image between the two with Raid, or software, or manually

Thats WAY cheaper than BR, and more reliable, and easier to work with having everything in one place rather than dinking around searching for a disk that has what you need on it.

Later on you can get a small 2.5" drive to be your "runner" and pull any data you may need on the road off your master disks.


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As for your SD card idea. Not only is it not nearly as price efficient as HDDs its NOT as reliable. SD cards can randomly just "go out" one day. I have had it happen. Also if you wanted to use that data on another device it has to have a card reader.

FYI a 32GB HCSD card is pretty close to $100 and the largest it can get. You can get a very portable 2.5" 640GB drive for the same price.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'd get a bluray burner, except that external ones are still pretty rare it would seem, and expensive. I think I'll just get some SD cards like I originally planned.

 

i have 1TB external hard drive and even one 2TB one is enough.. u don't have to do anything RAID or complicated..SD cards IMO are way more expensive and easier too loose.. also slower than Hard drives.