One thing I've learned recently trying to go back through my old disc collections and archive things is that discs are prone to failure over the long term, and

One thing I've learned recently trying to go back through my old disc collections and archive things is that discs are prone to failure over the long term, and spreading your data out over more discs means less overall loss when a failure occurs. I have CD-Rs that have pin holes in the foil layer, whole sets of DVD-Rs from CompUSA that look perfectly fine and show up as new blank DVDs rather than the data that's clearly on them. Yes, archival quality discs can help and the Taiyo Yuden's I bought way back when I think have all held up, but even some of the pressed and manufactured DVDs and CDs I have are starting to show signs of failure. If I were going to buy a large archive of software, I think I'd want it spread across multiple discs, even at the expense of having more physical media.