In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Searching a bit further, it seems that some (all?) Blu Ray writers have a single laser for CD/DVD but it has circuitry that switches it's frequency. In either case, it seems you have a problem with the DVD side of things

When I took the lid off to look and stood well back, the only laser that lit up was the blue one, but I presume the other one must otherwise it would not have read CDs, but that is not perfect, sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't.

I've got a nice external Samsung writer, which is useful for switching between my many computers. That's always worked well, and does rewritable Blu Rays too, but I'm not sure if Samsung make them anymore. I always liked LG internal drives.

I doubt many are produced these days as more and more people are using other forms of storage, i choose my LG one as it was the cheapest one at the time, but it was picky with discs, LG improved it a little with updates, but I have some blueway disks here that will only work like a floppy, UDF format, in that I can drag files to it, but I can't use software or windows to burn a load of files to them in one go. They are used once and that is it, but still useful.

This new one seems to offer more than the old on, even writing to 100GB discs, not cheap, a 5 pack of 100GB M disks is around £78

A Samsung EVO 128GB SD card from Amazon would be cheaper @ £13.79 delivered, faster and give you 28% more storage.

I've found SD cards to be an extremely unreliable source of storage. I've got more than a dozen dead ones.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

A Samsung EVO 128GB SD card from Amazon would be cheaper @ £13.79 delivered, faster and give you 28% more storage.

Maybe, but these are M-disk, so they are different to normal disks in that they will last for years. I doubt I will get M disks and if I do they will be DVDs.

It is possible to get 10x25GB BD-RE, rewritable Blueray for about £15.

I have SD cards, but I normally use them in my camera, the only one I use for long term storage is the one with Reflect on, so I can boot up the computer and restore it with an image, but then I have also able to boot into Macrium reflect direct from the SSD as it has a menu that come up, windows or reflect

I also have a stack of USB pen drives.

My main reason for getting the drive is so I can get data that is stored on DVDs

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

I've found SD cards to be an extremely unreliable source of storage. I've got more than a dozen dead ones.
[/quote

i have found that out, I tried to read some files from a SD card that had been left for a few years and no go.

Well it came yesterday and Herpes left it outside, I did not notice until this morning. It was not supposed to have come until Monday.
It works anyway, I can now read DVDs

It is also manufactured in March this year, which surprised me, I did not think they were produced any more.

Herpes 🤣

Reminds me of:

Patient: "Doctor, doctor, I think I am suffering from Hermes."

Doctor: "I think you mean Hepres."

Patinet: "No, I'm a carrier"

😂😂😂

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Herpes 🤣

Yep, i hate them, awful company, i have to deal with them at work, I have had so many shouting matches with them

I have ordered some disks,Blue-ray M-disks,5x25GB ones for £17, they will keep data safe hopefully

👍