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M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

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Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#71

Post by bob1029 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #58
bob1029 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Dumping a…

Local encryption is not going to help 100 year recoverability

Preserving 256 bits is not that difficult.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#72

Post by artmanja111 »

~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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#73

Post by rietta »

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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#74

Post by ssl-3 »

kolinko wrote: post #34
noinsight wrote: post #4

The drives to read them (Blu-rays) will be the problem. Pioneer stopped manufacturing them in 2024, only LG drives are available now. 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.

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?

It's universal for us, right now.

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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#75

Post by mapontosevenths »

ndiddy wrote: post #65
mapontosevenths wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's truly a strange article. 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…

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-verbati…

They are all HTL now. There are no remaining manufacturers who produce LTH or use organic dyes in blu ray. That said, I agree.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#76

Post by varispeed »

tambourine_man wrote: post #14

Every few years or so I flirt with the idea of backing up to M-Disks. Then I remember how slow and low density they are. For recording and forgetting, I recently played with LTO, again. But I always end up at local HDD + remote AWS Glacier.

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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#77

Post by mixmastamyk »

artmanja111 wrote: post #72

~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…

My TDKs from ’96 are still fine.

For stuck mechanical disks I remember a modest bump to the side with a screwdriver handle was sometimes enough to get it going.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#78

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

steveBK123 wrote: post #30
mapontosevenths wrote: post #23

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-as…

> 100 years is long enough, and 1000 years was always a wild-ass theoretical abstraction. The software will be an issue before the hardware anyway inevitably

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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#79

Post by fer »

esskay wrote: post #62
bob1029 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Dumping a…

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. (But yes - regardless of what it is, encrypt it)

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.

Re: M-DISC – DVD/Blu-ray compatible discs that may last up to 1000 years

#80

Post by kaliszad »

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.)
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