At the risk of making some readers feel a little old, there are now several generations of people who have probably never used or handled optical discs. Add to that, modern Blu-ray discs are much more robust than CD or DVD technology, and there’s a good chance you either don’t know how to handle or store them, or you’ve forgotten.

This wouldn’t matter much if physical media weren’t relevant anymore, but as we’ve argued in the past, physical media have several advantages over streaming, and if we rely on online, cloud-based services alone for access to content, then we’ll lose some forever, or at least for long stretches at a time.

So, if you’ve been convinced that it makes sense to collect and preserve content on disc, let’s talk about how you can make those discs last as long as possible.