On 03/09/2016 23:14, Bert Coules wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:

...because hard drives are in fact much more reliable than
the drive you put the CDs and DVDs into...

While that might well be true, my feelings are somewhat coloured by the
fact that in all my years of owning and using them I have never had any
CD or DVD drive go wrong or damage a disk. On the other hand, I've lost
count of the number of hard drives I've had which have failed.

CDs and DVDs scratch, and writeable ones degrade. I would treat them as
really bad for archival.

The only way IMO is out to a third party, ie something cloudy. Let them
take care of replacing the hard disks.