Where did you get the crabs?

Thanks for your reply but sadly hard drives don't last as long as disc's if properly taken care of. Lets face it
when you use a disc most of the time you install your game and up to the self it goes for safe keeping meaning longer shelf life of the game. Hard drives on the other hand get accessed daily like mine lol. I do have plenty of hard drive space 2 TB hdd's segate but i did have an older hard drive die on me. Some people i herd horror story's about segate and thankfully I haven't had to much issue's with mine (knock on wood) Only had one die on me so far so.... guess that's a plus haha. But on a side note I did buy this nice Blu ray burner and i have some disc's i got free that i can copy my game library to nicely. Look's like I'll have to write my code tho for install menu sounds like a fun project but going to take me some time as I am new to this just starting learning now but it be good training.

Welcome!I I was new once, this place will give you good feels :P

Enjoy your stay!

- Tim :)

No, not really. DVDs are super inconvenient for managing data.

I used to back up movies, books and games to DVDs. At the U, I managed the particle physics department pirate library. It was an actual (unpaid) job that required a huge time investment. Later, I worked with people's private data/media collections on HDs. I also have a private library of actual paper books (which are static and valuable as they are and won't be updated and aren't going anywhere) - and it's still a pain in the ass to document. So I have the experience of working with private data storage on a large enough scale to notice what works and what doesn't, and here's what the experience taught me.

- Compiling the collection to optimize disc usage, removing trash files, writing and then checking the disc, labeling it and saving metadata eats up time like you wouldn't believe. Then, eventually, you're going to fuck up and/or your collection will require updating. You'll discover the metadata/labeling scheme you initially developed cannot handle updates.

- With 4.5GB to a DVD (kinda), you'll probably be able to fit 4 actual GB on a single disc on average. A HD holds upwards of 1TB and costs roughly 2/3 of what DVDs cost (per byte, 100pcs spindle). But with DVDs, you aren't going to be able to access all that data at once, because it comes in arbitrary 4GB pieces and you only have 1-2 DVD drives. Let this sink in: to access all the data I have at my fingertips with a cheapass HD I bought in 2010, you'll need 350 DVD drives. 350. Of course, you aren't going to actually need ALL THE DATA provided your collection is static and your metadata scheme is perfect (false and false), but just the overwhelmingly hueg scale of that number makes it plain to see that no, the data isn't going to be magically sorted to DVDs to always be conveniently accessible.

Specifically, a collection of GOG games needs to handle:
new games
new versions of games, to replace obsolete ones
new releases of games, to complement existing releases
new versions of releases, etc......
new extras and updates to extras
mods and fanpatches
possibly some other game-related user-generated data like saves, logs, videos etc (optionally)

- What if you need to make a raw search for something unaccounted for in the metadata? On a HD, you can build an index with any software application you happen to be using at the moment. DVDs? Tough shit. DVDs are glacially slow.

- Finally, there's the matter of reusing/recycling resources. If you shell out for a dock/enclosure right now, you can always stick these HDs into a desktop or a NAS later. DVDs are useless. And don't even get me started on rewritable DVDs - you aren't going to rewrite them if you value your money, because burning a new DVD is cheaper than messing around with the old one.

DVD's! D: who use's dvd's .This is the age of blu rey :D But you do make some solid points :)
I believe Samsung is in development of making a 25 layer blu ray disc x.x guess there getting kinda big now eh?

Blu-rays were competitive approximately never as a personal storage medium. My laptop was notable, at the time of purchase, for having a blu-ray "combo" drive (read-only), it had an enclosed brochure and a demo mode showcasing how totally sweet hi-def movies looked and why you absolutely should buy a laptop capable of playing them. It also had two HDs for a total of 640GB of internal storage.

Hello, and welcome to the forums. It is good to see other people who also prefer the disc version of PC games, since most the people I know are either console or steam people.

That's what they said about DVD back in the day. DVD came onto the market in 1997, but the first PC game on DVD didn't come out until 2003, and even so, it took a few years for DVD to really establish itself as the physical medium standard over CD (in fact, many indie games still are released on CD even today!) The only reason that Bluray hasn't yet taken off for physical distribution on PC is that the Xbox 360 was the lead platform for many titles, and the 360 used DVD. Hence, it was always easier to supply several DVDs than a single Bluray.

We're reaching breaking point though. Max Payne 3 came out on no less than 4 DVDs, and when games start breaking that boundary, you have problems.

Also, now that the Xbox One, Wii U and PS4 all use Bluray (or in the case of Wii U, a variation of it), the likelihood of more widespread Bluray adoption on PC is increasing.

Jamy knows his stuff! :O