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

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 hours ago

    No, and my only readers are on the old workstations I use as servers. Bigass thumb drives just do more better and have since 16 gigs made a thumb drive bigass

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 hours ago

    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

  • daggermoon@piefed.worldEnglish
    2·
    10 hours ago

    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.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    1·
    11 hours ago

    In theory I still do.

    In practice, so rare I basically don’t.

    Top reason: Operating systems.

    Secondary reason: Backup artwork or research.

    But, no, I don’t. I’ve been lax. Pendrives and big drive on hand.

    Would be good to get back to some DVD backups of important things.

  • FalschgeldFurkan@lemmy.world
    1·
    11 hours ago

    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.

  • klangcola@reddthat.com
    1·
    11 hours ago

    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 😅

  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    16 hours ago

    I used to have one of those little joke .exe files called Cupholder. If you clicked on it, it opened the CD drive.

    • essell@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 hours ago

      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.

  • yesman@lemmy.world
    11·
    23 hours ago

    I have a small library of music CDs, because I liked music before there was an internet. I recently ripped them to .FLACC.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 hours ago

      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

  • Mpatch@lemmy.world
    12·
    24 hours ago

    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.

      • Mpatch@lemmy.world
        3·
        22 hours ago

        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.

  • ClipperDefiance@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    23 hours ago

    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.