BluRay discs offer several advantages over backup tapes for the purposes of archiving. The capacity, storage requirements, life expectancy, and cost all influence one’s decision to use BluRay discs for their data storage needs. Just like with backup tapes and other formats, there are systems that can be scaled up to meet the specific needs of the archive.
Cost is one of the best reasons to choose BluRay archiving over alternative formats. The hardware for tape backups can be hundreds or thousands of dollars, while a BluRay drive and recording software can be purchased for less than one hundred dollars. Individual backup tape costs vary widely. Tapes with capacity similar to single layer BluRay, such as the 20/40GB DDS-4, start around ten dollars each, while 25GB BluRay discs start at less than a dollar. When budgetary concerns are important in your buying decision, BluRay archival has an obvious advantage over tape formats. Read More
Using Blu-ray media as an archival format has many advantages. The media can be safely shelf stored for 10 years or more. It requires no operation or refreshing to maintain function and data, like mechanical and flash memory hard drives. It has the lowest energy resources needs. And playback devices are plentiful and inexpensive, unlike tape backup systems. All of these factors contribute to making Blu-Ray one of the most affordable archival technology choices available, both to acquire and to use and maintain. Exactly how you use Blu-Ray and the equipment or record and access it depends on your needs, and there are many options to choose from. 
With the improvements in broadband download speeds and the advances in hard drive capacity and performance, more and more people and business find themselves moving away from physical media and relying on digital copies, be them on hard drive, downloaded from the source, or streamed from cloud storage services. Regardless of the many benefits and advantages of these technologies, there are still reasons to use or keep a hard copy backup of what you want and use. 