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relying on self-burned optical discs is a disaster waiting to happen.
Relying on them might be, but they still saved my ass as they were done before I had any cloud storage. They're also mega convenient for 'non-critical' backups or bunging stuff on a disc for a mate when you don't want to give them a whole drive or sending stuff overseas for the same reason.
I thought magnetic drives were more reliable (I'll still not use them myself) but then I did a quick google:
What do you make of this?
hippy-
Note my "as long-term cold storage" qualifier; as in, leaving the drive powered off for years lying in a cupboard, as you would do with a cold backup, which your burned optical discs are.
SSD flash cells degrade over time unless they're regularly powered up, whereas hard drive platters can lie in stasis for decades without decaying, and it's usually the mechanical gubbins that fail long before the magnetic storage medium degrades.
Operational reliability as per the Backblaze data is a completely different metric.
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Budget 16GB USB sticks are a literally a couple of quid new these days, or less than £1 on aliexpress, and so much more convenient and reliable than fannying around with burning and trying to read BD-R discs...
ectoplasmosis
Spinning drives are much more reliable as long-term cold storage than even SLC SSDs, and relying on self-burned optical discs is a disaster waiting to happen.
Just get a load of powered external USB 3.5" SATA caddies and fill them with 14TB spinning drives of various makes (helps to avoid a 'bad batch' from a single manufacturer) and dash them in various locations. Not that expensive these days.
If you really care about long-term archival cold storage, then magnetic tape is still king.