Cost Comparison, DVD vs. USB Flash Drive

USB sticks are hitting rock bottom prices these days. A 16GB stick is now under $30. And 8GB sizes are easily available for under $15.

However this is nowhere near as cost effective as burning DVDs. In fact it’s not even close.

The 16GB stick is $30. Put into cost per gigabyte, each gig costs $1.88.

A 100-pack spindle of Maxell (a mid-grade brand) 16x DVD-Rs at Wal-Mart costs about $25 for +R or -R, tax included. That’s 470GB worth of storage, and translates to about 5¢ per GB.

Big difference.

DVD’s biggest advantage is cost; it’s the cheapest way to store data. I don’t know of any other media that’s as cost effective.

However the single largest drawback of optical media is its life span. Premium optical media is supposed to last 10 years, but few of us (including myself) don’t buy premium grade. We buy whatever is on the shelf that’s immediately available. The life of the disc gets knocked down quite a bit with mid-grade brands. At best you might get 5 years out of it. Some are lucky and get more, but most of us don’t.

My suggestion to anyone who backs up routinely (which you all should do): For the time being, go optical because there’s nothing cheaper. Buy yourself a 100-pack, crank up your DVD burner and burn away. When Flash drives drop below 25 cents per GB (meaning a 16GB stick would cost under $5), move your data over.

Given the way Flash media price is dropping like a brick, the 25-cent-per-GB mark should occur well before the life span of your optical media is up.