What's your budget? You typically get what you pay for. I currently own a Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-ray optical drive that can read and write Blu-rays, DVDs CDs and
M-Disc. I used M-DIsc to backup all of 2019's Wikipedia using a software called Wikitaxi. So this copy on M-Disc apparently will last 100 years or something. I'd read that entire Wikipedia article. Good information as to the claims. Never the less, I chose to use it for archival stuff.
I'd have to go back at my Newegg account again and see if my purchase of this drive is still there, but I must have bought it circa 2018 or maybe earlier. It looks like the drive came out in at least 2014. So I've owned this drive now for at least five years and so far so good. Though, never gets as much abuse as you used yours. I've burned several Blu-rays of 25GB and 50GB which is the max this burner can burn. They do make Blu-ray burners and Blu-ray optical media that can burn up to 100 GB and as far as I know that's the limit for Blu-ray. I took my entire ~55GB Flight Simulator install and compressed it with the 7z archive and burned that entire 7z archive to a 50GB Blu-ray disk for backup. The now compressed 7z archive probably weighs in at around 40GB after compression. Leaving about ~10GB of space left on my 50GB Blu-ray disk. I mostly use the DVD/RW part of this optical drive with my website backups, password manager backups and other important data backups that fit on a 4.5GB DVD/RW disk. I buy my optical media on eBay.
It looks like
Walmart currently has the cheaper price for this drive at $84.50. While
Amazon currently has a sale for $99. The reviews on Walmart are
from Walmart people it seems. One review said they couldn't burn a Blu-ray which is bunk. I own this drive, I've burned Blu-rays, and it's meant to burn Blu-rays! LOL! The other review doesn't know crap about computers... Lets just put it that way. Here are some
eBay listings. There's a seller with at least 9 of them currently, but I see on the drive it says Europe something or other so that may be region locked. I know you should be able to change the region up to 5 times, but buyer beware on those. They may be perfectly fine though. I'd have to do some research.
https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Computer/Computer+Drives/BDR-209DBK
Now absent of that, you have your choice of these other Pioneer optical drives if interested:
BDR-212DBK
BDR-212V
And this one, a DVR-S21L is just DVD capable like you asked.
I've only owned three branded optical drives in the past, and they were; NEC, LG and Asus. My NEC branded DVD drive lasted a while, and I got some good use out of it, but I feel like it could have lasted longer. I bought it in 2006 and it died on me circa 2010. Installed several games with it, burned maybe 40 CDs if that and a handful of DVD optical media. The LG optical drive I bought was an absolute marvelous joke. That particular model (I don't remember which now) needed a firmware update to work, but you couldn't even install the firmware update. It was nothing but a massive catch 22 piss off and now I utterly hate LG products because of it... I know, I'm biased. The Asus optical drive I had used quite a bit and it still works but sits in the closet as a backup since I replaced it with this Pioneer Blu-ray burner.
I want to make my next optical drive purchase a 100GB Blu-ray write capable drive. The one I own now can only burn 50GB disks. At the time I was in the market for a Blu-ray burner, I looked and looked for a Pioneer that could burn 100GB Blu-rays and M-Disc but found none so had to settle with the next best Pioneer that could write M-Disc and 50GB Blu-rays. So, since I already have an M-Disc capable burner, I could find another Pioneer that just burns 100GB capable Blu-rays.
Optical media is actually pretty good stuff in terms of data backups. For one, bit rot is very low. If the disks are kept in a cool, dry and dark place and never wrote on they will last and last. I have one of those
mini optical disks with browser bookmarks and Game Shark PlayStation game saves burned to it from around 2004 and today I can still read that disk!
I store all my data backups in ~$35 fireproof safes made by SentrySafe meant for electronics bought on eBay. If God forbid an EMP were to ever happen or a solar flare well, my data is still intact because optical media is not susceptible to electromagnetic discharge like an electronic chip is. I actually had to try and convince this very ignorant person on another tech forum like this website forum that optical media was in fact not susceptible to electromagnetic discharge. He had it in his little low IQ head that an EMP or solar flare is like being hit with a microwave and that the disk wound melt. LOL! Well, the last CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) was sometime in the mid 1800s and no one melted or got 1000x sun burn. Though, the telegraph lines were charged with so much electrical energy that you could send a telegraph
without battery power. Scary thing is, I think we're overdue for another CME, and if it hits in our modern time people WILL die thanks to our computer dependency. It will take a number of years alone just to bring manufacturing back online and to replace what was lost. Chips, hard drives, computers, servers, you name it. There's a good Ted Talk on this and I've been saying it for years. Kinda like that character in the movie Independence day about aliens. LOL
Anyway... I mention Pioneer and their Blu-ray line of drives because I think Pioneer is a good brand. I could only find one of their optical drives that was only DVD capable though. Today it's Blu-ray/DVD/CD combo drives. At least from reputable companies I reckon...
