Copy 500GB music/video to CD for backup

Last time I looked, a standard CD has a capacity of 700 MB - that's 0.7 GB. A standard DVD can hold 4.7 GB. Do the math - just how many convenient CD's or DVD's will you need to haul around to hold your 500 GB of music?

That would be a lot of CD's - more than 700. I realize that CD-R blanks are cheap, but how much is your time worth?

Using SL DVD's (I do not trust DL DVD's for backup), you would need more than 100 DVD blanks. That is more reasonable, but how much is your time worth?

I'd buy another external drive to backup the backup.

Going with dual layer DVD blank like Verbatim (preferably manufactured in Singapore, not India) you would need 62 blank DVDs. A 500GB hard drive actually has less than 488GB of storage. A DL DVD can store about 7.93GB.

A single layer DVD can store about 4.37GB of data which means you would need 112 blank DVDs to fully backup your data. Blank single layer DVDs cost less than 1/3 what blank dual layer DVDs would cost.

Burning your data to disc is a better way to backup your data since discs are non volatile and do not have mechanical parts that can fail. Buying a 500GB hard drive to backup your 500GB external drive is faster and cheaper than buying a bunch of dual layer or single layer blank DVDs to backup your data. However, it is not considered a secured backup since the hard drive can easily be erased and can mechanically fail.

In a home environment, it probably won't matter, but for business's, CD's and DVD's are not legitimate storage/backup media due to disk rot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

@OP, I agree with others. It will be quicker and easier to copy the files to a larger drive.