dvd burner or external hard drive?

hey,

Need a means of back up so i'm just wondering what's better. An external HD or a DVD burner?

i know External hardrives can fail and when they do you're screwed. But DVD burners give you unlimited yet, reliable back ups as if one disc screws up you only lose 4 gigs of backup. So i'm also wondering is it possible that a dvd disc's data will somehow just dissappear one day?

and what other disadvantages/advantages of the dvd disc/dvd burner method of backing up files and the external HD method?

thanks

I would go for a external hard drive, they might fail, but rarely. It works just like a hard drive in the computer if you're getting the AC powered one.

what advantages do they have over dvd burners though?

It's more common the DVD disc gets scrathed and wont work than hardrive failure, I've got 2 external drives, 1 I've had for over a year and hasn't failed me yet.

External hard drives are more convenient. You can transfer files over anytime and delete the files as you wish. If you burn your data to a DVD, you can't change it once its written. That is unless you get a rewritable DVD which will definitely cost more.