Numerous laboratory tests have proven that CD/DVD's are not safe and robust. I've also had loads of problems with DVD and player incompatibility. There are tables somewhere of which DVD and which player go together.
I've used goodness knows how many PC's over the past 13 years of working in IT, and I've never had a hard disk crash. A few colleagues have but I've shared office space with thousands of people. Many of my machines have been hand me downs. It sounds like nirofo works in PC maintenance where he/she sees failures. But if a component is going to fail then it will probably be the disk as most other bits are solid state. I've had a PSU go once. I suspect that the robustness of HDD's is improving over the years. I go running with my iPod which contains a HDD (Samsung I think) and the little marvel survives.
Even if a HDD does crash on average after 5 years (which I dispute), that's on a par with a DVD if not better. And a 200GB HDD costs ~£80, compared to maybe half that for DVD. But for the convenience it's worth it IMO.
But surely the real question is how long will a powered down device can store the information.
I'm tempted to look into tape drives as a backup method. The initial cost might be offset by the reliability compared to hard disks.
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