What's cheaper HD/BR drives or hard drives for backups?

[Leander]

I have a growing library of HiDef movies and TV Shows that I currently keep on about 8 hard drives and a few hundred DVDs, I've been really excited about finally moving everything over to either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

But the question is, is it cheaper to buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD writer along with the media or are hard drives the more cost effective option at this point?

Anyone aware of any price drops on writers in the near future?

[Dubber]

From what I see - BR 25GB blanks are about $20 a piece. 500GB worth of storage = $400.00 while HDDs - 500GB = $180.00.

Also, you need to invest in BR drive and speeds are at 2x as of now...

[edDV]

Trends:

Hard drive prices are dropping fast.

BD/HD blank media hasn't started a decline yet and I'd predict prices stay high until writers are under $100 and commonly installed in new computers.

Multi-Layer HD/BD media will probably be expensive for many years. There is no large block of buyers for > 25GB media that would drive prices down.

25-100GB discs would have value for backup but not at the likely price levels.


PS: I'm beginning to think something like hard disks organized as a RAID1 (2 drives) or RAID 5/6 (4 drives) might be cost effective as an archival backup drive.