Can i do this folks?

[druiaghtagh]

I have a large music collection on my pc, to free up space, i was considering burning to all to dvds, can i then later if i wish transfer from dvds to cds so they can be played on stereos or car cd player please?

[fo3nix]

Yes you can, but you'd probably have to burn the mp3s on the DVDs onto audioCDs, to make them readable in the places you want.

[wacky racer]

Shouldn't be a problem but don't assume that a DVD is a permanent storage solution. I have vinyl records 40 -50 years old - a bit crackly but nothing a wash with soapy water can't handle. I wouldn't trust a CD/DVD to be in the same condition after a decade or two. Keep more than one backup just in case.

[smorodina]

A CDr has a life expectancy of about 2 to 5 years and this is probably the same with a DVDr too. RW versions may have an indefinite life, so I'm currently making backups to these. However, many of the disks I made in the last few years on CDr are now partly or completely unreadable. One or two DVDrs have also failed. Far cry from the promises of lasting forever that all this technology was launched with, isn't it?

[druiaghtagh]

Thanks to all, i learnt two things today, did not know you could your wash your vinyl collection and i did not know that cdr was nor permanent, i have shed loads of precious family photos on cdr, thought that was a good pemnanent solution

[Machecoul]

External Hard drives are not that expensive - might be worth investing and putting music / photos on one of them. Should be able to get 80gb for about �60-�70.

Of course nothing is foolproof. As mentioned above.

I ought to take my own advice ... LOL

[BillyBB]

I moved all my music and pictures to an external harddrive. The music plays just as well from that as ever.

[wacky racer]

Sure hard drives are slightly more reliable but a cheap HD is likely to be IDE and who is to say they will not go the same way as a floppy or mag tape in ten years.

[fo3nix]

An external hard drive is the best solution overall right now, but does cost more than DVDs. But probably considering GB/pound, hard drives are better value overall.

CDs are a better medium to store data on than DVDs though, because they have more built-in error checking (due to CDs being developed for music primarily, where small errors are much more noticible than random movie data that DVD was developed for).