Scott Bourne from the "This Week in Photography" podcast recommends backing up your photo library to "gold" archival CDs as well as external hard drives, off site, etc. He uses Delkin gold CDs. I was wondering, does gold really outperform "silver CDs" or is this just a marketing ploy?

Not sure, but I wouldn't trust anything to CDs long term. I'd rather use two hard drives (one to backup the other backup).

There are 3 problems with gold DVD's:

1. The cost of gold DVD's.

2. There are more "gold looking" DVD's on the market than actual gold layer DVD's. The dyes can be made to appear any color in the rainbow. Only Mitsui America (MAM-A) produces gold DVD's (the only company in the world, in fact). Some other companies may re-brand MAM-A gold DVD's, but their marketing is so poor, you really can't tell what you're buying. I tried burning some MAM-A silver DVD's last year, but the burn quality wasn't very good. I'll have to try burning MAM-A gold DVD's when I get the chance.

3. What you really want is high quality burns for the short term (the first 20 years). Unlike fine wine, DVD's start deteriorating the minute you remove them from the burner. They only get worse, until errors build to the point where you cannot mount them. So, you may want to use a BenQ DW1640 (with the BSMB firmware update) burner with Verbatim PN 95137 DVD's for the best burns. Incidentally, the BenQ firmware is so bad, it cannot read its own disks. You'll need another burner for that task.

Another consideration-if the CD or DVD will last X years, you will have to have a player/reader available to read it for its lifetime. Technology changes so fast you may be copying your digital archive to a new format in 5 years?