Using DVDs

Investing in a fire safe wouldn't hurt either if you don't have massive piles of Discs. If it's one thing that worries me it's a fire breaking out in the middle of the night or during the day and I am Gone...

Have to do some research into the properties of the plastic that CD/DVD are made out of. The fact that flash point of paper is not reached within a fireproof safe is not a guarantee that the temperature is not hot enough to warp the CD/DVD to an unreadable state!

Fireproof safes are available in either paper or data types. The data fire safes are designed to keep the inside temp. low enough to not damage tapes for the rated time.

ctcks wrote in post #4102473
Sonic Record Now! will also tell you how many dvd discs you will need based on the amount of data that is selected to copy. All you have to do is drag and drop the files or folders to a list and the program calculates how much media you'll need, then it copies them when you're ready. This method is simple and really maximizes the discs.

Wow, Thanks! I have that program and have not used it for this. I use WinRar to create *.rar files to exactly fill the DVD's, this will save a few steps. Does it have file verification?

I back up to an external hard drive and also to archival quality CDs. CDs are known to last longer than DVDs, although if you use high quality gold DVDs it's probably a moot point because they'll last a long time.
I bought them here.
http://www.mam-a-store.com/goldcdr.html
They're much more expensive than the cheap disks you can buy off the shelf but many of my photos are priceless (to me) so it's worth it.