But you'd need modified hardware to play any backup, and in some cases to even make a usable image.
Also, in today's society, there are already images of pretty much everything out there.
This. It's often easier than backing up your own games.
I cant find CD-R's that work well with modded ps1's. I tried verbatim but half of the discs i burn fail to verify and don't play right. But they work great for dreamcast games.
You mean that modded PSone, right? I tested it with a handful of burned discs with no issue. I really don't tend to pay attention to brand when I buy them. I just grab whatever's cheapest and I haven't had any issues yet aside from one batch of CompUSA brand discs about 15 years ago.
All media will degrade over time. How long will optical media last? That remains to be seen. The people currently having issues with disc rot I think are examples of poor quality control rather than actual degradation of the disc. But it will happen eventually. And with hard drives, solid state or magnetic, are cheap and large. And it's easier to keep them backed up and not have to worry about data loss.
But you'd need modified hardware to play any backup, and in some cases to even make a usable image.
Also, in today's society, there are already images of pretty much everything out there.
For console games, that true. I know I want to do it for PC games for sure since no modifications would be required. But it would still be nice to have backups of everything for peace of mind. I've never liked relying on other sources to backup any of my data or trying to find an ISO if I had to. Plus, who knows, access to a disc press might be simple a cheap in time and then you wouldn't have to modify the consoles to make the images work.
Backing up media with something that's far less stable than the original media just seems self-defeating, and I honestly can't think of any means by which to store data which is more stable than optical discs. They can be left on top of the biggest sub-woofer you could ever buy without losing an iota of data, you can take em in the bathtub with you if you'd like, and lack of write-ability ensures that you never accidentally format it or delete something you need/want.
I know. It won't ever be commercially available or viable unless they completely change the process by which they're manufactured, and there's absolutely no reason to since there's already a consumer product (recordable media) which is suitable for 99% of anybody's purposes. If you take a look into the process involved, you'll see that it's about the same as someone making injection molded plastic parts in their house.
Not to mention that you'd need access to original files/tools in the instance of PS1 games, as they all contain a patch of corrupted data which can neither be duplicated with a CD-R, nor can it be read and stored with a CD burner, which served as their copy protection. It can only be pressed into the disc, and it's required for a non-modified PS to accept the disc as original. Seeing as there is no way to extract that exact bit of corrupt data, even having your own press would be of no use beyond what any old CD burner can do.
