You can buy a 240 gig solid state HD that weighs only 113 grams. The future is now, my friend.

A DVD in a slim case is thinner but considerably wider than a portable HDD. Too wide for an average jacket pocket. Uh, pretty much all of them? It's not 1999 anymore.

Like this one:
[url=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MNGQ6C?tag=ttr_external_hard_drive-20&ascsubtag=[site|ttr[cat|758[art|NA[pid|51915[tid|NA[bbc|NA]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MNGQ6C?tag=ttr_external_hard_drive-20&ascsubtag=[site|ttr[cat|758[art|NA[pid|51915[tid|NA[bbc|NA[/url]

1 TB
5.10 x 3.25 x 0.80 inches
216 g

Compare a DVD slim case: 5.59 × 4.92 × 0.2 inches, less thick and lighter but wider in both dimensions.

And even a conventional HDD in the 500 GB range will only clock in at ~150 grams. You can get portable 4 TB HDDs and barely exceed 250 grams...

If the data you need is a single DVD, then you either put it in the laptop's drive or on a flash disk (or in cloud storage). If the data you need to transfer is in the region of hundreds GB, then you get a portable disk with you.

Yep, a thumb drive is the way to go for small (literally) storage needs. For backup purposes it's a portable HDD. Optical loses on both counts...

But only Optic can be displayed :D with Custom Covers and such :D

No one is keeping you from putting thumb drives into Amarays with custom covers... :D

By the way, no one mentioned an important detail that might come up. Some GOG games have very large installers that you can't burn onto a single CD/DVD. Usually those games have multi-part installers (game_installer.exe, game_installer1.bin, game_installer2.bin...). To deal with those, burn each file to CD/DVD as normal, but when it comes time to install, you're going to have to temporarily copy the install files to your HD.

For example: Wasteland 2 Director's Cut has three install files: a 35MB installer, a 4.09 GB dat file, and a 2.7 GB dat file. We'll call them File 1, File 2 and File 3. A DVD can only hold about 4.38 GB. What to do? The best course of action would be to do this:

1. Burn File 2 (4.09GB) to a single DVD. It will take up most of the DVD.
2. Burn Files 1 (35MB) and 3 (2.7GB) to a second DVD. You'll have lots of extra space so maybe use it to hold all the bonus features, or anything else you need.
3. When you want to install, put DVD 1 into your drive and copy Files 1 and 3 to your HD.
4. Then put DVD 2 into your drive and copy File 2 to your HD.
5. Install the game using the EXE.
6. Once the installation is complete, delete the copies of the installer on your HD.

Unfortunately, GOG's installers are sized for DVDs, not CDs or small thumb drives. If you absolutely must use CDs or a small thumb drive and want to copy something that won't fit, I recommend you use a file splitter program like GSplit. It can split your installers into multiple files for burning, and even give you an automatic expander program to put them back together again even if the target computer doesn't have GSplit.

You found me out! Ack!

I've given away several games to a friend for no cost... Games including Amazon queen, Tyrian, Teen agent, Ultima 4, Beneath a steel sky, and Warsow...

Although it was mostly to fill up space on a disc...

Very generous. The financial sacrifice in giving so much must have been hard to bear. :/

I'd pay for Tyrian.

That is, if I didn't already have it, so please refrain from sending me offers. :P

7zip includes splitting for archives. Simply store (rather than compress) in a new archive and specify any size you want, including settings all ready for CDs (650-700) or smaller. Although i wouldn't recommend taking a huge game and splitting it over multiple mini CDs (approx 100Mb)

Good point about thumb drives, you can get up to 500gb (if I remember correctly) patriot drives, which are tiny and very fast. I have a 120gb one and have all my portable apps running from it and it is as light as a dvd, although a bit pricier :o)

USB drives?

Nice avatar!