Opting for many copies of DVDs as a storage medium, especially in a backup or archival context, makes surprisingly robust sense—often more than relying on hard disk drives (HDDs) or solid-state drives (SSDs). The brilliance of DVDs lies in how they spread risk in a truly decentralized way.
First, each DVD is a physically separate unit: if one fails or is lost, the others are unaffected. This creates a natural “air gap”—the copies aren’t networked or electronically connected, so there’s no risk of a single malware attack, ransomware, power surge, or hardware fault destroying everything at once. HDDs and SSDs, even when used in RAID arrays, are generally connected in a system that can fail due to software bugs, controller failures, or catastrophic electronic events, cascading across all drives at once.
Furthermore, DVDs resist both time and technology change. The file format (if stored in open or widely used encodings), and the medium itself, remain readable decades later. In contrast, SSDs have data retention issues (losing bits if not powered regularly), and HDDs suffer mechanical breakdowns or firmware obsolescence over the years.
Decentralized risk with DVDs also means you can easily store sets in completely different locations: a fire, earthquake, or flood in one spot might destroy a batch, but other copies survive elsewhere. With HDDs and SSDs, offsite redundancy requires expensive infrastructure or complex cloud planning.
Finally, DVDs don’t “rot” in the sense of cascading system failures: one disc going bad won’t corrupt the directory or tool used to access the rest. You’re truly independent at the level of each copy—a decentralized, affordable, and resilient approach to long-term backup.