I got this spindle specifically for an additional backup of my photos. From my previous experience with LightScribe DVDs I ‘ve gotten an impression that they are some of the most reliable recordable optical media that I’ve used, good enough for most of my archiving purposes. I chose these DVDs based on their Amazon reviews and ratings, and so far I have not been disappointed.

Since I got them I’ve gone through about a dozen DVDs and have not had a single corrupt disk. I’ve burnt all of the DVDs on two of my Mac computers – one with an internal superdrive and one with an external USB-attached superdrive. I’ve tested the burned DVDs on both my Mac and Windows computers, and they have all worked just fine.

I’ve used the LightScribe burner on my Windows HP laptop with a few of them, and it had worked OK – the performance of the LightScribe burner on this laptop has never been all that good, and over the years the final image has only gotten worse. I have never been a big fan of LightScribe. It has a very pale look (worse than the e-paper), and inscribing the image on a CD or a DVD tends to be very finicky. From what I’ve seen so far these Verbatim DVDs will perform on par with all the other high-end LightScribe DVDs that I’ve used, but this has not been one of the main considerations for me when choosing the archival quality DVDs.

Overall, these are very solid archival quality DVDs. No optical media will hold your precious data forever, but these DVDs will probably keep it safe for as long as there are DVD drives out there, and quite possibly much longer.