Does Blu Ray requires software for data use under WinXP (I imagine so)? Will Windows Vista have native support? I've had it with disc-burning-hell because of no native OS support.

As far as I know, BD does not require special software in Windows XP/Vista.

You can use ImgBurn to burn your data straight to BD-R/RE or BD-R DL media.

Also if you want to drag and drop like DVD-RAM, you will need to format the media first using Blu-ray/DVD-RAM drivers, in particular an executable file called DVDForm. There are some explanations in one of the Blu-ray drive review here, including which UDF version for BD-R or BD-RE media.

Looks good. Drag & drop and directing programs to a drive letter/folder is key for me (and most PC users).

In a one hour long burn such as done in the thread you referenced, how much heat is generated? Is it time to get burners out of PCs and make them external drives? Usually there is not much airflow around an optical drive in a PC case.

TonyTech, I didn't measure the heat but I wouldn't worry too much. Even in a six minutes DVD burn you can feel the heat if you take the disc right after the burn.

The one hour burn done by Nero 7 is because Nero 7 does not have an option to disable verification thus it writes at 0.9x. Current release of ImgBurn (2.0.0.0) also has this issue but next release this weekend or so will fix the write speed by disabling verification (like in DVD-RAM) thus you can write with a true 2x BD speed (=9 MB/s or equivalent to about 7x DVD speed).

What I'm "concerned" about is the scenario where a "large" backup is being performed over a number of disks. I mean there has to be some kind of limit until the drive shuts down (if it has such smarts built into it) from excessive heat. It's not necessarily just a Blu-Ray issue, but with any optical disc burner. Though the extended burn times of Blu-Ray would make it the worst case scenario. I don't really know how much heat is produced during the burn process as I haven't really noticed or done much burning in great volume. I'll bet some people here could shed some light on that though.

Aside:

Drives (hard disks for example) traditionally HAD to be put inside of PCs because there was no external data transfer link that was fast enough. But now we have USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and eSATA which makes it probably prudent to revisit traditional PC box design. That and the ubiquitousness of networks even at residential sites may make external drives/central-storage a better choice. And drive technology is so volatile too: capacities and speed increase frequently resulting in upgrades. Finally, every PC at a given site does not need to have a burner in it because writing optical media is a "rare" occurance in that hardly ever do 2 people need to be writing at one time: a shared external USB drive would fit the bill nicely.

I know a lot of the folks here have a pile of optical drives in their basements from upgrades. I'm just thinking out loud about the possibilities for modularity now that it is feasible to do so because of the fast external interfaces.