DVD-RAM better than Hard Disk?


Being a well defined specific issue I thought this may be better served by its own thread.

One friend emailed his opinion that DVD-RAM and HDD are more convenient than +RW or -RW media. However, he adds, HDD can crash but RAM is crash-proof: Therefore, , DVD-RAM is the single best choice for a recording medium, even better than HDD.

Would everybody agree with that?
aktchi
I agree to a certain extent as nothing is crash proof. Even DVD-RAM discs can fail. I have many DVD copies that no longer play well. But, Blu-Ray with 50gig of storage space should be even better.
DVD-RAM can be damaged by several methods including being written on by a pen. Nothing digital is crash proof. DVD playing has a slower access rate so jitter can become a problem on conventinal equipment. A good SATA Hard drive can keep up with almost anything. The best bet is redundency. Good backups go a long way. You can use either tape or redundent HDs for this. Static memory in theory would be even better but even solid state memory can go bad and its expensive per MB compared to CD/DVD/HD.
DVD-RAM ---CAN--- fail, but it seems to be about as fail safe as you are going to find today, the price is pretty good, more and more hardware is supporting it... DVD-RAM won't crash like an HDD, but it is not very often that HDDs crash and of course a DVD-RAM disk can be damaged as mentioned above.

Point is, both can have problems but if you take care of the disk, DVD-RAM is an OUTSTANDING/HIGHLY RELIABLE tool WITH potential weakness just like anything else available. Those who use DVD-RAM almost always feel it is a gold standard of sorts-- It seems like usually using it is all it takes to be convinced. Now if more people learn to use it :-)...