The discs are entirely compliant with the Blu-Ray spec, there is no “compatibility” mark; anything made in the past 10-15 years should work fine. Your writer is out of spec?
I ran Linux backups on BD-XL 100GB discs for awhile. I lacked access to space in a salt mine, and the M-DISC media was prohibitively expensive, and unnecessary, since the Linux system, its drives, and its backups have all gone away by now. And nothing of value was lost.
As of the 2020s, there are only 2 licensed manufacturers of M-Discs: Ritek, sold under the Ritek and RiDATA brands, and Verbatim with co-branded discs, marketed as the "Verbatim M-DISC".[14][15]
Depends. There are still barely any options for real archival-quality media for regular people. Most of what we have access to has a <20 year shelf life. M-Disc is one of them.
Closer to < 10 years for hard drives, SD Cards and USB sticks.
All of the combine controller electronics with the storage medium itself, which is another point of failure, and one not easily repaired. Their lack of electrical isolation from a host, combined with their lack of true write protection, makes them vulnerable during read.
Sadly, 5.25" internal Blu-ray drives are all but extinct now, though USB-C variants are still somewhat readily available with transports from Hitachi-LG.
In a 1000 years even if they don’t have the drives, as long as they still know roughly how it works maybe they will photograph it with a microscope and read the tracks in the M-Disc from that. Then they will have to decode it also of course.
If I’m not mistaken only optics are really unique to BD and need dedicated production? Everything else is rather universal components so even a hobbyist should be able to build a BD reader from scratch - having access to servos, cnc, and 2000s-level electronics?
I think when it comes to precision movement we never went back and we probably won’t go back. We’ll surely have different ways to accomplish it, but society would need to collapse big time for us to not be able to recreate mechanics to operate the laser.
Speaking for myself, but: I think it's just lack of market demand.
I used to give people data on a disc -- first floppies, then CD-R, and eventually DVD-R. It got the job done, was often much faster than sorting out how to do it over the network (especially if they were already standing right there), and it was cheap-enough.
For a long time, when I wanted to carry some data from A to B, I'd just put it on some manner of round disc and take it with me. It worked well.
I'd also use them for local data storage at times when they were cheaper than on-line spinny-rust storage. Lots of us here remember having floppy disk indexes and stacks/binders of optical discs. (Some of us still have them.)
But it's been years since I've done anything at all with a disc and I never found a compelling-enough use for BD-R to begin with.
My car has two optical drives right there in the dashboard and I have no idea if either of them can play a CD or DVD full of MP3s. It also has a USB port for mass storage, bluetooth, an aux input, and HDMI (which I'll use I ever feel like getting around to making a lossless digital-domain streamer with librespot). I'm surprised to find myself stating that I'm not motivated at all to see if it can play an MP3 from a disc, but the lack of this motivation is real.
I feel remiss in saying that I don't recall the last time I saw my stash of new CD-Rs although I do think that I know exactly where the last spindle of DVD-R blanks is located.
I think I've even got a USB optical drive somewhere that I scored for free, and I suppose that it would work, but I've never actually used it. For anything, at all. I've had it for years.
---
It seems obvious to say, but: I just do a lot of that stuff over the network these days. When I want to give someone some data, I just email it to them as an attachment -- even if they're standing right there. If it's a lot of data, I can upload it to Google Drive or ye olde Dropbox or something, and share it from there.
Or, pocket supercomputers: If two of us are using our new-fangled pocket computers and want to combine our high-res photos and videos at the end of an outing, stuff like Quick Share on Android (or Apple's AirDrop) can automatically stand up a fast, private, bespoke, temporary 802.11AX network in an instant and get that done at blazing speed without using any wires or external media at all.
When I still want to carry "a lot" of data from A to B, then: I've got thumb drives ranging from a few gigabytes to a half-terabyte. The latter holds the same as 20 single-layer BD-Rs, or ~100 DVD-Rs and is much friendlier to deal with.
For hoarding data at home, I just use hard drives. They're online. They're automatically snapshotted with ZFS to help prevent my own errors from deleting or corrupting stuff accidentally. The replaceable bits are replaceable. The more-unique bits also use RAIDZ2 and are additionally backed up every night with restic to somewhere else in the universe.
I really should add another copy (maybe using a tidy Raspberry Pi system on a shelf in a friend's workshop or something), and that copy really should use an independent backup method, but it's Good Enough and doesn't involve a single optical disc.
---
It's still easy-enough to buy new optical blanks if I wanted them for something, and I used to use quite a lot of them...but I just don't want to use them at all anymore.
I have a few of these drives. They also rip discs very accurately. Bit-identical to my Plextor, at a fraction of the price. But sadly no ripping software offers these the verification logging that is required for redump approval.
Right thats the much more likely issue! Some Google-like reaction in the future where using service X (chat/mail/whatever) from Amazon results in being banned across an entire account which also happens to be the account you wrote all your data to AWS Glacier with for 30 years... oops!
I think the most realistic concern here is amazon scanning your backups. I totally get it. A lot of the reason for retaining total control over the storage medium is that what is being stored isn't strictly legal.
You should locally encrypt 100% of the information you store on someone else's system with strong symmetric encryption. In fact, I think Amazon's legal team would quietly prefer that you do this.
I cant imagine many people are backing up movies/tv shows, certainly not ones readily available should a recovery be needed. I can understand more obscure shows but backing up something like The Odyssey would be a colossal waste of storage and money.
For a while Google Workspace didn't enforce the 5TB per user limit and eventually I had 50TB of suspiciously named backups (for real, you should see my DVD collection). Nothing came out of it except for the enforcement and the pain of moving everything elsewhere again.
I can assure you it is readily available online and always will be. And now that we've had confirmation you basically own nothing then it'll be more prominent than ever.
Went through m-disks phase, too small to me, got some used LTO-6 and after going through the pain of having a working controller for it somewhere I'm pretty happy.
Cloud is more rational, but.. it's gated by some company. Which can arbitrarily cut you off. It should not be a problem with a proper setup, but it's nice to have a thing that you can hold that holds your data and you can put anywhere you want.
With LTO though it requires physical action to do the backup, with Glacier I'm assuming you can configure it some way that even if backing up machine is compromised they will keep the data for some time.
I did do that. Box of disks, one weekend burning back to back, then going to a plot of land I buy from time to time in the middle of nowhere and burying it in a weatherproof metal capsule.
It is said that cellulose film can achieve a 1000-year life expectancy if stored in specialized cold and dry storage environments. Oh and its a fire/explosion hazard
On March 18, 2019, it was revealed that Myspace had lost all of its user content from launch until 2015 in a botched server migration with no backup. Over 50 million songs and 12 years' worth of content were permanently lost.[102] In April 2019, the Internet Archive recovered 490,000 MP3s "using unknown means by an anonymous academic study conducted between 2008 and 2010". The songs, which were uploaded between 2008 and 2010, are collectively known as the "MySpace Dragon Hoard".[103]
Verbatim, who owns M-Disc doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
The discs sold as M-Discs now are actually just MABL BD-R's. They used to have a 'stone' data layer. Now they use a titanium metal data layer. MABL discs were always designed to last for about 100 years, and are orders of magnitude cheaper.
100 years is long enough, and 1000 years was always a wild-ass theoretical abstraction. The point is that you'll be dead before your disc is. If the next generation cares and drives are still available they can copy it to a new source.
These same discs are sold with a "Guarantee" as archival discs that are tested with heat/stress to last that 100 years, but any MABL disc really should,and they're much cheaper if you just get regular MABL discs. I think Pioneer is one of the big brands making the archival discs, or at least branding them. I last had to import mine from Japan. If you check the disc ID though, you'll see that archival discs are literally the same disc you can by cheaper without that label.
Some M-Discs still have a proprietary disc label, but my understanding is that even those just come off the same lines.
Note that almost all tests and marketing claims about M-DISC (most notably the 1000-year claim) where about the DVD versions. The main distinguishing characteristic of DVD M-DISC is that they do not use organic dyes like standard DVD+/-R, which can degrade relatively quickly. This is also why M-DISC DVD is not always compatible with any DVD reader/writer.
Verbatim / Millenniata loves to conflate claims about the original DVD M-DISC and the later BD-R M-DISC. But unlike DVD-R, standard BD-R already don't use organic dyes (with the exception of some low grade "LTH" discs). AFAIK there has never been good evidence that the BD-R M-DISCs have any special sauce compared to any other non-M-DISC BD-R. (Strengthened by the fact that there have never been compatibility issues or special equipment requirements to read/write M-DISC BD-R.)
I think more & more that hobbyists need to keep air gapped old-OS/hardware machines in the garage to manage this kind of stuff.
Otherwise you quickly run into connectivity / driver / application / OS compatibility hassles trying to get even 10-20 year old stuff from our own lifetime experience to run.
I'm not sure how we expect our great-grandchildren to figure out how to get data off a disc/drive in 100 years.
I can look at a film strip or print from my grandfather or play his records more easily than I can run software from my own childhood.
That misapplies systems thinking: It's necessary to have both the software and the hardware, so it is necessary to have the hardware.
By the above comment's reasoning, you wouldn't invest in hardware because you'll lack the software, and then you wouldn't invest in the software because you'll lack the hardware.
The hardware will definitely be a problem. Optical heads have elastomeric parts that are unlikely to last a century. They have precision plastic components that may become brittle. All of the knowhow and specialist tools to make and service them will be gone. USB and the drivers will still be around barring a complete collapse of civilization.
> USB and the drivers will still be around barring a complete collapse of civilization.
Famous last words. At the current state of software you will need a specific UEFI version with a specific certificate (which expired in 6 days) running a specific Windows version with specific drivers version.
Damn, even LTO, which is used for archiving, is only compatible with 1 generation behind.
The human race is only able to make things to last, by accident.
With 100 years you need every other generation to rewrite/refresh them, or the data is lost.
For things recorded today, nobody will care about refreshing for 75 heads, and if during 2100-2125 there are some budget constraints/wars/whatnot, the data will rot.
With 1000 years, you can just throw stuff into a bunker and all that it will take will be for someone in a period of 2800-3025 to take the time to refresh the library. 200 years should be enough to wait through a mild civ collapse or something.
Sure we’re talking about times beyond our lifetimes, but a lot if things we are sorrounded by were planned by people who knew they wouldn’t live to see the outcomes.
> Verbatim clarified that these discs were advancements. The technical changes resulted in a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media-ID was due to an adaptation with regard to other Verbatim products. Verbatim had already shipped the first modified media in early 2022. The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: Data should also last 1000 years, according to the manufacturer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs". Verbatim used to be owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media, and was sold to CMC Magnetics in 2020. The only two manufacturers I see on that page for Verbatim discs are Mitsubishi Chemical Media and CMC Magnetics.
Even verbatim's own website no longer makes the thousand year claim. Saying instead "several hundred years".
However their website also claims that the disc's use "etched" stone-like data layers, which is also demonstrably not true. Their own marketing says titanium in other places (on the spindle insert).
I think that Verbatim (or their shambling post-buyout animated corpse) just lies a lot or is filled with confusion about their own product.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs".
I wasn't aware of the chain of ownership. That said, they literally sell the same disc identifier as both m-disc and non m-disc.
I don't think it's just a reused ID either. If you put them next each other they're identical, and they use the same media label. The old disc's were both visually distinct and had a unique ID.
The only difference zeems to be packaging. I don't doubt that it's the same quality.
They stopped selling the much worse LTH discs and all the disc's are good now.
Yeah in general the value proposition of Blu-Ray M-Discs makes less sense vs. DVDs because the standard BD-Rs are also inorganic. One thing the random person on Reddit (and the people parroting his/her claims) don't seem to have realized is that the Blu-Ray M-Discs have always been visually identical to standard BD-Rs. Here's a review from 2015 that mentions this: https://goughlui.com/2015/10/16/review-tested-verbatim-lifet...
> The disc itself does have a printable white top, but also features branding in the centre consisting of areas of clear hub. The underside looks pretty much the same as a normal BD-R, being metallic chocolate brown in colour. It is visually indistinguishable.
...
> This bought me to a realization – unlike DVD’s, almost all regular BD-R discs do not use organic dye recording layers. Only BD-R LTH type discs do, and they have been shown to have poor longevity. With one of the main reasons for causing disc failure no longer an issue, it seems possible that this disc is not materially special compared to a regular BD-R.
The review also mentions that the text on the disc packaging quotes a lifetime of several hundred years, so that hasn't changed either. The actual M-Disc testing certification mentioned in the review quotes a 95% CI expected lifetime of 530 years and a mean expected lifetime of 1,000 years (meaning only half the discs can be expected to last that long).
In general, one thing to note is that M-Disc isn't an open standard, so the criteria for what is and isn't an M-Disc aren't publicly known. I think it's entirely possible that standard inorganic BD-Rs pass whatever criteria are necessary to call something an "M-Disc", and that there's never been any real difference between a high quality BD-R and an M-Disc BD-R.
> Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
Isn't that the case with all Western manufacturers these days? They buy stuff from China and slap their label on it. Management has no affinity with engineering and technology, all they know is marketing.
I think it's more the size of the data rather than digital vs analog. you could have digital data stored on punch cards or say a large array of dip switches and it would last ages, but the storage density is terrible. Meanwhile disks and ssds store massive amounts of data on a very tiny space but it's prone to corruption over time.
Punch cards that are laser cut from metal would probably outlast stone tablets.
There is no fundamental difference between symbols inscribed on a stone tablet with a sharp tool versus symbols etched onto a reflective disc by a laser. In both cases you are recording symbolic information on a physical medium; they both record digital information.
The true difference between digital and “analogue” lies in the nature of the representation and interpretation of information, that is whether they are descriptions (symbolic) or analogies. The shape of the groove on a phonograph record is an analogy of a sound wave signal. The pits in a compact disc represent numerals which give a description of the amplitude of a signal at a given point in time.
I'm wondering about which device I'd use in about 100 years, via which chain of Quantumbolt adapter to Gizmoidics Nineblazeultra to Akashix. Or would I have something in which I'd put the media, and had it directly scanned by advanced beamforming arrays?
> These same discs are sold with a "Guarantee" as archival discs that are tested with heat/stress to last that 100 years, but any MABL disc really should,and they're much cheaper if you just get regular MABL discs.
Is there any kind of 'binning' going on that would make them different? A lot of things are made on the same assembly line, but after QC testing certain batches may be treated differently depending on the results.
> Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
They're owned by one of the other disc manufacturers (CMC Magnetics), so I think they're technically putting their name on their own discs. But, "they" is CMC now.
1000 years means it's only good for archival purposes, or are people gonna bank on when they pass it on to their loved ones, they'd keep more and more junk instead of using a new medium?
Making a 1000 years future claim is very bold, if not to say: marketing.
I think CDs and DVDs largely died because of USB devices. I have like a
10cm x 15cm external harddisc. So it is not that expensive and can store
5TB of data. It also won't last forever but that is not so important; if
it lasts +10 years that's already fine. Usually you may then purchase a
cheaper new device, that probably then has more storage too. And you may
have some backup devices too. CDs and DVDs in this context are not very
convenient, a bit like how they replaced the older floppy devices (oddly
enough I liked floppy discs more than CDs and DVDs, in particular the
ones you could twist, they also would fly like crazy through the air; the
smaller harder floppy discs were also nice, I remember them from the Amiga
days, but the flexible ones were epic. Storage devices today are much better
but nowhere near as fun).
Did a little research on BDXL because the need for multi-decade backup longevity, which I never worried much about, became more relevant now that I recently retired and have time to read some 80s 5.25, 3.5 floppies and 8mm/Hi8. Would be fun to see some of the first assembler I ever wrote.
I learned:
* Standard BDXL: ~$6/disc / M-Disc BDXL: ~$12 (longer lasting)
* Write/verify to 100GB BDXL discs at 4x is ~2 mins/GB.
* TFA says "128 GB BDXL never made it to market due to the 2016 bankruptcy" but a larger reason is that even though 128GB ( 4 vs 3 layer) was in the standard, it wasn't well-characterized. Turns out adding the fourth laser was harder/costlier than expected and read reliability was poorer. 100GB 3 layer is the sweet spot.
I've looked into M-Disc several times, as a way to backup and archive my personal and family data over the course of my lifetime (and possibly the next generation).
The relative obscurity of the format, the drama around Verbatim's acquisition and the dwindling options for a Blu-Ray player ultimately keep me from investing in it.
Honestly, I'd love a shelf-stable storage mechanism that isn't tape.
There is some conjecture that the Blu-ray version of M-Disc are really just MABL discs, which already had significantly longer stability than precious consumer optical formats.
What's particularly interesting though is that, as hard drive and SSD prices continue to surge, and consumer interest in optical formats dwindles, blu-ray can now be cheaper per GB than HDD.
~20 years ago, I used to back all of my stuff up on whatever brand of DVD-R was cheapest at Best Buy. I think it was usually TDK. I figured I’d get around the problem of dye degradation by re-burning the discs every few years.
That, of course, didn’t actually happen. However, I had the same files backed up on a WD MyBook of the same vintage, which was properly parked and stored in an antistatic bag.
The stuff sat in a storage locker — the DVD-Rs in a binder, and the MyBook in its original packaging — for close to two decades.
I finally pulled it all out recently to see what was still recoverable. I figured the discs probably wouldn’t work, but the MyBook would be fine.
In fact, it was exactly the opposite. Every disc read perfectly, but the MyBook wouldn’t even initalize. Ping-ping-ping-thunk.
It’s amazing how unpredictable storage devices can be.
Many hobbyist users don't check optical discs' contents after being written. Instead just rely on the "success" or "fail" provided by recording software. Or simply re-insert a written disc & take a glance at the directory structure. As opposed to read back an entire disc's contents & compare bit-for-bit with the source data.
Read: discs could be bad on day 1. Or mostly ok but with some corrupted files in there. But user didn't check, notice or even care. Decades of storage don't improve anything (other than the data not being needed anyway).
I am working an a fictional world set 1800 years in the future. A whole subplot is the digital resurrection of 1990s Microsoft Encarta encylopedia which was the first time in a millennia they had a glimpse into this time beyond fragmentary evidence from printed materials. In the timeline of the novel, the disks had been discovered 300 years prior but no one knew how to read them and the general degradation of the substrates. Then 150 years before a graduate student figured out how to use imaging from multiple different disks and piece together to get an entire rendering of the bit pattern. But it took only at the time of the narration that the breakthrough was made on how to decode and render the data in part because of "digital Rossetta stone discovery" found at a dig in North America encrusted in volcanic obsidian glass. Anyway, the professor protagonist ends up traveling in a post oil world by sail to Argentina as an invited guest in a highly interest lecture scene reminiscent of the Dead Sea scrolls discovery.
There is a lot of work to do, but I am actually intellectually interested in realistically understanding how the far future can deal with interpreting the digital dark ages that we currently live in now which are completely forgotten because the administrators stopped copying data one day.
Laser etching QR codes onto thin sheets of non-corroding metal or ceramics may be a lot easier to preserve and read back. Also etching the ISO/IEC 18004 standard as text/ images may be doable also. Reimplementing the needed software can be done with today's AI in a matter of a day or two. (I have actually done that over a longer period of time though.)
I store my data on magnetic hard disks in a shed outside my home as a contingency for when my house burns down. I believe magnetic storage is durable enough for the rest of my lifetime (50 years?) and it has the added advantage of being writeable so I can make a backup once a month.
Magnetic tape storage is designed to last decades or more and is cheap to boot. Audio master tapes from 50, 60 and even 70 years ago are still perfectly playable if proper precautions are taken (i.e. baking them in an oven beforehand).
How many people are storing data on a medium and throwing it into storage for hundreds of years? I don't think even the U.S. government does that.
I've burned our home movies etc onto Bluray (BDMV) precisely because I think it's the easiest way to preserve these memories in a self a documenting way.
What has a greater chance of being watched in the future? A disc labeled "Home Movies 2020-2022" that conforms to a wells documenting standard (even if it is obsolete in the future), versus a folder on a NAS that can only be accessed over SMB, or an account on a cloud storage service whose terms and authentication method may change without notice?
I'd be willing to bet that the longevity and accessibility of the former outweighs the latter. All of these approaches require ongoing maintenance: the latter methods require maintenance against an environment that is actively changing and not self a documenting.
I don't think we should underestimate the power of a physical object that can be inspected and transferred by anyone capable of manipulating and observing the world.
90 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 57.8 ms ] threadcitation needed. My DVD/Blu-ray writer does not support M-DISC
> may last up to 1000 years
or may not. Who knows ?
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/new-m-disc-to-pro...
I ran Linux backups on BD-XL 100GB discs for awhile. I lacked access to space in a salt mine, and the M-DISC media was prohibitively expensive, and unnecessary, since the Linux system, its drives, and its backups have all gone away by now. And nothing of value was lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC#History
Depends. There are still barely any options for real archival-quality media for regular people. Most of what we have access to has a <20 year shelf life. M-Disc is one of them.
All of the combine controller electronics with the storage medium itself, which is another point of failure, and one not easily repaired. Their lack of electrical isolation from a host, combined with their lack of true write protection, makes them vulnerable during read.
Sadly, 5.25" internal Blu-ray drives are all but extinct now, though USB-C variants are still somewhat readily available with transports from Hitachi-LG.
Any bluray reader will work to read tho.
Coincidentally I just bought one, they’ve doubled in price now recently.
Also bought some M-Discs to try. They’re half the price in Japan (Amazon) compared to Germany.
But that doesn't mean that it will stick around.
History shows that when we figure out a better way to do stuff, we tend use the new way going forward and the old stuff tends to get forgotten.
Large storage hyperscalers or whatever just use tape?
I can't wait for tape patents to expire.
I used to give people data on a disc -- first floppies, then CD-R, and eventually DVD-R. It got the job done, was often much faster than sorting out how to do it over the network (especially if they were already standing right there), and it was cheap-enough.
For a long time, when I wanted to carry some data from A to B, I'd just put it on some manner of round disc and take it with me. It worked well.
I'd also use them for local data storage at times when they were cheaper than on-line spinny-rust storage. Lots of us here remember having floppy disk indexes and stacks/binders of optical discs. (Some of us still have them.)
But it's been years since I've done anything at all with a disc and I never found a compelling-enough use for BD-R to begin with.
My car has two optical drives right there in the dashboard and I have no idea if either of them can play a CD or DVD full of MP3s. It also has a USB port for mass storage, bluetooth, an aux input, and HDMI (which I'll use I ever feel like getting around to making a lossless digital-domain streamer with librespot). I'm surprised to find myself stating that I'm not motivated at all to see if it can play an MP3 from a disc, but the lack of this motivation is real.
I feel remiss in saying that I don't recall the last time I saw my stash of new CD-Rs although I do think that I know exactly where the last spindle of DVD-R blanks is located.
I think I've even got a USB optical drive somewhere that I scored for free, and I suppose that it would work, but I've never actually used it. For anything, at all. I've had it for years.
---
It seems obvious to say, but: I just do a lot of that stuff over the network these days. When I want to give someone some data, I just email it to them as an attachment -- even if they're standing right there. If it's a lot of data, I can upload it to Google Drive or ye olde Dropbox or something, and share it from there.
Or, pocket supercomputers: If two of us are using our new-fangled pocket computers and want to combine our high-res photos and videos at the end of an outing, stuff like Quick Share on Android (or Apple's AirDrop) can automatically stand up a fast, private, bespoke, temporary 802.11AX network in an instant and get that done at blazing speed without using any wires or external media at all.
When I still want to carry "a lot" of data from A to B, then: I've got thumb drives ranging from a few gigabytes to a half-terabyte. The latter holds the same as 20 single-layer BD-Rs, or ~100 DVD-Rs and is much friendlier to deal with.
For hoarding data at home, I just use hard drives. They're online. They're automatically snapshotted with ZFS to help prevent my own errors from deleting or corrupting stuff accidentally. The replaceable bits are replaceable. The more-unique bits also use RAIDZ2 and are additionally backed up every night with restic to somewhere else in the universe.
I really should add another copy (maybe using a tidy Raspberry Pi system on a shelf in a friend's workshop or something), and that copy really should use an independent backup method, but it's Good Enough and doesn't involve a single optical disc.
---
It's still easy-enough to buy new optical blanks if I wanted them for something, and I used to use quite a lot of them...but I just don't want to use them at all anymore.
I've moved on.
From what I understand, Verbatim no longer manufactures true M-DISC media. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1i0ky6v/what_h...
It's all just MABL now.
Or the technology is inherently expensive, but I can't believe that is true.
For recording and forgetting, I recently played with LTO, again.
But I always end up at local HDD + remote AWS Glacier.
You should locally encrypt 100% of the information you store on someone else's system with strong symmetric encryption. In fact, I think Amazon's legal team would quietly prefer that you do this.
Dumping a bunch of bare files named things like:
into S3 buckets is probably a bad idea.(But yes - regardless of what it is, encrypt it)
Cloud is more rational, but.. it's gated by some company. Which can arbitrarily cut you off. It should not be a problem with a proper setup, but it's nice to have a thing that you can hold that holds your data and you can put anywhere you want.
With LTO though it requires physical action to do the backup, with Glacier I'm assuming you can configure it some way that even if backing up machine is compromised they will keep the data for some time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_National_Archives_vault_f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
Also related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace#Music
The discs sold as M-Discs now are actually just MABL BD-R's. They used to have a 'stone' data layer. Now they use a titanium metal data layer. MABL discs were always designed to last for about 100 years, and are orders of magnitude cheaper.
100 years is long enough, and 1000 years was always a wild-ass theoretical abstraction. The point is that you'll be dead before your disc is. If the next generation cares and drives are still available they can copy it to a new source.
These same discs are sold with a "Guarantee" as archival discs that are tested with heat/stress to last that 100 years, but any MABL disc really should,and they're much cheaper if you just get regular MABL discs. I think Pioneer is one of the big brands making the archival discs, or at least branding them. I last had to import mine from Japan. If you check the disc ID though, you'll see that archival discs are literally the same disc you can by cheaper without that label.
Some M-Discs still have a proprietary disc label, but my understanding is that even those just come off the same lines.
Some reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yu4j1u/psa_ver...
https://blu-raydisc.info/licensee-list/discmanuid-licenseeli... (search for verbatim and note the manufacturer column)
Verbatim / Millenniata loves to conflate claims about the original DVD M-DISC and the later BD-R M-DISC. But unlike DVD-R, standard BD-R already don't use organic dyes (with the exception of some low grade "LTH" discs). AFAIK there has never been good evidence that the BD-R M-DISCs have any special sauce compared to any other non-M-DISC BD-R. (Strengthened by the fact that there have never been compatibility issues or special equipment requirements to read/write M-DISC BD-R.)
The software will be an issue before the hardware anyway inevitably
Otherwise you quickly run into connectivity / driver / application / OS compatibility hassles trying to get even 10-20 year old stuff from our own lifetime experience to run.
I'm not sure how we expect our great-grandchildren to figure out how to get data off a disc/drive in 100 years.
I can look at a film strip or print from my grandfather or play his records more easily than I can run software from my own childhood.
More likely it will just hallucinate content that plausibly could be on the disc and display that for the unwitting
If 1000 year AI cannot write firmware & drivers for fairly standard discs, then AI has failed massively.
By the above comment's reasoning, you wouldn't invest in hardware because you'll lack the software, and then you wouldn't invest in the software because you'll lack the hardware.
Famous last words. At the current state of software you will need a specific UEFI version with a specific certificate (which expired in 6 days) running a specific Windows version with specific drivers version. Damn, even LTO, which is used for archiving, is only compatible with 1 generation behind. The human race is only able to make things to last, by accident.
For things recorded today, nobody will care about refreshing for 75 heads, and if during 2100-2125 there are some budget constraints/wars/whatnot, the data will rot.
With 1000 years, you can just throw stuff into a bunker and all that it will take will be for someone in a period of 2800-3025 to take the time to refresh the library. 200 years should be enough to wait through a mild civ collapse or something.
Sure we’re talking about times beyond our lifetimes, but a lot if things we are sorrounded by were planned by people who knew they wouldn’t live to see the outcomes.
> Verbatim clarified that these discs were advancements. The technical changes resulted in a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media-ID was due to an adaptation with regard to other Verbatim products. Verbatim had already shipped the first modified media in early 2022. The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: Data should also last 1000 years, according to the manufacturer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs". Verbatim used to be owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media, and was sold to CMC Magnetics in 2020. The only two manufacturers I see on that page for Verbatim discs are Mitsubishi Chemical Media and CMC Magnetics.
Even verbatim's own website no longer makes the thousand year claim. Saying instead "several hundred years".
However their website also claims that the disc's use "etched" stone-like data layers, which is also demonstrably not true. Their own marketing says titanium in other places (on the spindle insert).
I think that Verbatim (or their shambling post-buyout animated corpse) just lies a lot or is filled with confusion about their own product.
https://www.verbatim.com/en/m-disc/products/43847-m-disc-bd-...
> I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs".
I wasn't aware of the chain of ownership. That said, they literally sell the same disc identifier as both m-disc and non m-disc.
I don't think it's just a reused ID either. If you put them next each other they're identical, and they use the same media label. The old disc's were both visually distinct and had a unique ID.
The only difference zeems to be packaging. I don't doubt that it's the same quality.
They stopped selling the much worse LTH discs and all the disc's are good now.
> The disc itself does have a printable white top, but also features branding in the centre consisting of areas of clear hub. The underside looks pretty much the same as a normal BD-R, being metallic chocolate brown in colour. It is visually indistinguishable.
...
> This bought me to a realization – unlike DVD’s, almost all regular BD-R discs do not use organic dye recording layers. Only BD-R LTH type discs do, and they have been shown to have poor longevity. With one of the main reasons for causing disc failure no longer an issue, it seems possible that this disc is not materially special compared to a regular BD-R.
The review also mentions that the text on the disc packaging quotes a lifetime of several hundred years, so that hasn't changed either. The actual M-Disc testing certification mentioned in the review quotes a 95% CI expected lifetime of 530 years and a mean expected lifetime of 1,000 years (meaning only half the discs can be expected to last that long).
In general, one thing to note is that M-Disc isn't an open standard, so the criteria for what is and isn't an M-Disc aren't publicly known. I think it's entirely possible that standard inorganic BD-Rs pass whatever criteria are necessary to call something an "M-Disc", and that there's never been any real difference between a high quality BD-R and an M-Disc BD-R.
Isn't that the case with all Western manufacturers these days? They buy stuff from China and slap their label on it. Management has no affinity with engineering and technology, all they know is marketing.
Punch cards that are laser cut from metal would probably outlast stone tablets.
The true difference between digital and “analogue” lies in the nature of the representation and interpretation of information, that is whether they are descriptions (symbolic) or analogies. The shape of the groove on a phonograph record is an analogy of a sound wave signal. The pits in a compact disc represent numerals which give a description of the amplitude of a signal at a given point in time.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/261878887064
Is there any kind of 'binning' going on that would make them different? A lot of things are made on the same assembly line, but after QC testing certain batches may be treated differently depending on the results.
They're owned by one of the other disc manufacturers (CMC Magnetics), so I think they're technically putting their name on their own discs. But, "they" is CMC now.
I think CDs and DVDs largely died because of USB devices. I have like a 10cm x 15cm external harddisc. So it is not that expensive and can store 5TB of data. It also won't last forever but that is not so important; if it lasts +10 years that's already fine. Usually you may then purchase a cheaper new device, that probably then has more storage too. And you may have some backup devices too. CDs and DVDs in this context are not very convenient, a bit like how they replaced the older floppy devices (oddly enough I liked floppy discs more than CDs and DVDs, in particular the ones you could twist, they also would fly like crazy through the air; the smaller harder floppy discs were also nice, I remember them from the Amiga days, but the flexible ones were epic. Storage devices today are much better but nowhere near as fun).
I learned:
* Standard BDXL: ~$6/disc / M-Disc BDXL: ~$12 (longer lasting)
* Write/verify to 100GB BDXL discs at 4x is ~2 mins/GB.
* TFA says "128 GB BDXL never made it to market due to the 2016 bankruptcy" but a larger reason is that even though 128GB ( 4 vs 3 layer) was in the standard, it wasn't well-characterized. Turns out adding the fourth laser was harder/costlier than expected and read reliability was poorer. 100GB 3 layer is the sweet spot.
The relative obscurity of the format, the drama around Verbatim's acquisition and the dwindling options for a Blu-Ray player ultimately keep me from investing in it.
Honestly, I'd love a shelf-stable storage mechanism that isn't tape.
What's particularly interesting though is that, as hard drive and SSD prices continue to surge, and consumer interest in optical formats dwindles, blu-ray can now be cheaper per GB than HDD.
That, of course, didn’t actually happen. However, I had the same files backed up on a WD MyBook of the same vintage, which was properly parked and stored in an antistatic bag.
The stuff sat in a storage locker — the DVD-Rs in a binder, and the MyBook in its original packaging — for close to two decades.
I finally pulled it all out recently to see what was still recoverable. I figured the discs probably wouldn’t work, but the MyBook would be fine.
In fact, it was exactly the opposite. Every disc read perfectly, but the MyBook wouldn’t even initalize. Ping-ping-ping-thunk.
It’s amazing how unpredictable storage devices can be.
For stuck mechanical disks I remember a modest bump to the side with a screwdriver handle was sometimes enough to get it going.
Read: discs could be bad on day 1. Or mostly ok but with some corrupted files in there. But user didn't check, notice or even care. Decades of storage don't improve anything (other than the data not being needed anyway).
There is a lot of work to do, but I am actually intellectually interested in realistically understanding how the far future can deal with interpreting the digital dark ages that we currently live in now which are completely forgotten because the administrators stopped copying data one day.
Magnetic tape storage is designed to last decades or more and is cheap to boot. Audio master tapes from 50, 60 and even 70 years ago are still perfectly playable if proper precautions are taken (i.e. baking them in an oven beforehand).
How many people are storing data on a medium and throwing it into storage for hundreds of years? I don't think even the U.S. government does that.
What has a greater chance of being watched in the future? A disc labeled "Home Movies 2020-2022" that conforms to a wells documenting standard (even if it is obsolete in the future), versus a folder on a NAS that can only be accessed over SMB, or an account on a cloud storage service whose terms and authentication method may change without notice?
I'd be willing to bet that the longevity and accessibility of the former outweighs the latter. All of these approaches require ongoing maintenance: the latter methods require maintenance against an environment that is actively changing and not self a documenting.
I don't think we should underestimate the power of a physical object that can be inspected and transferred by anyone capable of manipulating and observing the world.