Ask HN: Availability of Writable Optical Media?

I'm trying to install a new OS (OpenBSD) on an Apple G5 Xserve.

This machine is unable to boot from USB, so the only options are an external Firewire drive (hard to find), netboot (possible, but quite some work to set up) or a (single-layer) DVD in the internal DVD-ROM drive.

I haven't used writable optical media in years. It seems that, at least here in Germany, inexpensive blank writable CD and DVD media are still readily available, but I wonder for how long.

So I'm thinking of a "lifetime buy" (maybe a 100-pack CDs and DVDs each), but I'm worried about the durability of unwritten optical media.

I would love to hear about your experiences with (long-term) availability and storability of optical media. Except for keeping the discs out of the sunlight and heat, are there recommendations for storing blank media?

3 comments

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fsflover 3y ago ↗

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33117813

ohiovr 3y ago ↗

Burnable cdroms or CD-Rs are an extremely poor archival format for data because the substrate can peal off. I have a 22 year old collection of cdrs and the failure rate was about 1 in ten. A shelved winchester drive has never failed me.

solardev 3y ago ↗

Can you install it once and then clone the installed hdd to an image? Then in the future you can just clone a new hard drive from the image, bypassing the OS install step?