why is the industry destroying/phasing out optical storage? I can't afford/trust some other physical media?

MediaType Cost Lifetime-Durability Speed Size Other
--------- ---- ------------------- ----- ---- -----

MediaTypes/systems: DVD,tape drive, cassette tape, DNA, stone, water, spoken word, vynl, quilt/cloth (loom), film, nuerons, optical, audio, pencil/stylus, brains

Cost of CD/DVD 35cents; Cost of thumb drive/micro-ssd : too much $10+; An idea might be to buy used old computers/get for free from people.

If you stop comparing prices and compare price per byte you will understand better.
I still use R/W CD media, and I have no problem sourcing it. Cassette tapes have gotten more rare. I can source VHS tape with difficulty, but finding a new player seems impossible. Some things just have so little market that it does not pay for anyone to produce them anymore. A pain, but that is the way it works. That is the way it has ALWAYS worked.

I have alot of stuff stored on discs. It's getting harder and harder to find systems with optical drives still.

the CD is not "big" enough to store anything, and actually an OS like MS Windows, or a software like LibreOffice do not really fit on a DVD. By using an SSD, you can get much more storage capacity (space) within a smaller (space) area - not to speak about the speed.
Additionally we have a lot of remote storage in the cloud (space?), we do not need to keep these things at home any more. You cannot put an optical device into a smartphone.

Because their customers aren't purchasing media in any significant volume anymore.

And their customers are the big players in the film/TV industry and, to a lesser degree, the software industry. They are all pushing hard for the rental/"service" model to become the norm, and physical media (and ownership in general) has no place in that future.

I was under the impression that the OP was mainly concerned with offline storage (mentioning USB sticks), and in that case using an SSD would be a very bad idea.So-called "cloud storage" has its own issues, one being that unless there's money and an SLA involved, you can lose your data at any time (and given enough time it's pretty much guaranteed that you will).

For what it's worth, external optical drives are still readily available, as are blank discs. I bought a package of disks at a local drug store just a few weeks ago.

I must confess, though, that I find myself using optical disks less and less often for data storage. Mostly now I use external USB drives for data storage.

About the only thing I have used optical drives for in recent years is to burn Linux *.iso files, because I've been too lazy to master the USB stick thing.

Afterthought:

To go back to the original question, I do think there is an element of faddishness here. I think one reason optical drives are disappearing from machines, especially laptops, is that the industry has become fascinated with making machines as "slim" as possible.

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In addition to all your thoughts, I must assume that all optical media that we use at home, bare the risk of data loss with the time.
I have no idea about the life-spans of USB-keys or SD-cards, but would not use them anyway for storing data for years.

While I own a few very old (small) but functional hard-disks in old outdated cases, I tend to print stuff on paper. It turned out that most of the material that I had considered worth keeping, was not. When a CD or DVD becomes unreadable, I do never really know what I just lost. When I crumble a sheet of paper, I almost always do.

The cabinet is 1.5m high, but I suppose it could be smaller, too.

Why?
https://www.amazon.com/SSK-External-...X93/ref=sr_1_4
And they still prefer online access.

Because consumer-grade flash memory with multi-level cells are rated for offline storage for no more than one year.

And USB sticks don't even have proper controllers to manage the cells. Even if a USB stick is left plugged in, you should expect to lose data to electron leakage after about a year.

Thanks for feedback. CD were supposed to last 10 years from last hearing about them. I had forgotten to add microfilm microfiche as a type of storage. BigTech must pay alot of money to back up data. edit: had forgotten I looked into hybrid drives (for now mechanical and flash drive technology https://www.techtarget.com/searchsto...rid-hard-drive, article updated june 2017)

I don't have any systems with optical drives anymore. It's been a long time since I've burned a CD, but I still buy audio CDs. A lot of big box stores sell USB optical drives.

Talking 'home' data here. I keep any data I may want to later retrieve all 'spinning'. Disk space is relatively cheap. If spinning, and you just do period backups and have off site backups. You'll be fine. Then rotate through the media over time discarding 'old' tech as you go. That way you'll never lose anything and your backup media never goes out of date as your constantly 'updating' to newer tech backup media. For me at the moment, my backup media is external 4TB portable HDD drives. Who knows what the next best media will be. Finally, when I am dead, no-one is going to care about this 'data' anyway so not worrying about long term storage (20 - 30 years?) is concerned and will go into the bit bucket.

You can buy USB 3.0 external CD/DVD/Blu-ray R/W drives still. I have a couple in my cabinet, but rarely use any more. Also have a USB floppy disk (3.5) reader as well. Nostalgia mostly.

I recently had to discard a bunch of CDs which I had written in the late 90s/early 2000s because they had become unreadable.

The DVDs which I still have from a couple of years later seem to have held up a bit better.

It's all trends. I've still got an LS-120 (IDE floppy) drive in the drawer, because I can't bring myself to throw it out.

I read an article about how there has been a surge in counterfeit flash drives and faulty flash drives that fail early.

I have some optical media i burned in the late 90's and it seemed to vary by brand. Some brands had corruption on every single disc. Others had no corruption at all. I seem to recall that you can purchase archival-quality optical media designed to last for 2 or 3 decades.

That aside, i have had more problems with failed optical DRIVES than the media themselves. When the drive fails, it doesn't just quit working: it has intermittent errors, which can wreak havoc on OS installs.

Ironically, it seems to me that the older drives have a lower failure rate than the newer ones. I have a Sony CD-ROM drive from the early 90's with a proprietary ISA controller and it is still working perfectly. The BD/DVD+/CD+ combos seem to drop like flies after about 5 years.