5 ms·

M-DISC Blu-Ray discs are still one of the few affordable options for long term storage if the amount of data you want to preserve matches the medium's capacity

by Tepix 4y ago

M-DISC Blu-Ray discs are still one of the few affordable options for long term storage if the amount of data you want to preserve matches the medium's capacity of 100GB per BD-XL disc. They should last 100 years or more ("up to 1000 years"). The 100GB BD-XL discs are quite expensive however (14€ each). They also seem to get harder to find. If you have less data you can go with the 25GB M-DISC Blu-ray discs (more drives can read these) or even with their DVD-R discs. Make sure to keep an external optical drive with USB-C around as well. I know that none of my PCs from the last 5 years had a builtin optical drive. If you have more data, consider LTO drives and copy them every 5-15(?) years.

8fingerlouie 4y ago
I have the same long time archiving strategy. Every year i burn an identical set of discs with the past years photos, and store them in separate locations. I use a mix of 25GB and 100GB discs, depending on the previous years photo activity (Covid-19 years fit on 25GB discs :D ) I also maintain a couple of external drives at the same locations that are surface scanned/updated/rotated yearly. I use no form of encryption or archiving software, and while some discs have a PAR2 file "embedded" this is not my regular practice. I don't want to be in a situation 20 years from now where i've forgotten the encryption password to my archive (though in 20 years todays encryption will probably be "trivial" to break) > They also seem to get harder to find I have noticed the same, and i hope that the industry realizes that there is a need for long term archiving at a consumer level price. Considering that all family photos these days are essentially all digital, there is either the option to archive it, or make physical copies, which is something i have considered as well. When it comes to documents, i make normal backups, but i don't archive them. The archive is disaster recovery, and if everything else has failed (including 3-2-1 backups), i doubt my 10+ year old documents are worth anything to me. Anything important exists in government databases and/or as physical copies. This may of course not be the case for everybody.
onion2k 4y ago
Make sure to keep an external optical drive with USB-C around as well. I know that none of my PCs from the last 5 years had a builtin optical drive. I think finding a device to read the media is likely to be a bigger challenge than finding media that lasts 100 years. I strongly doubt a normal Blu-ray player would last that long unless it was kept in a controlled environment.
- mrpopo 4y ago
  Yes. I kept my external blu-ray player in bubble-wrap in a drawer for the last 5 years with no use for it. When I tried plugging it in last year, it was no longer working (clicking noise, probably from one of the motors). In 20 years, absolutely no one except maybe specialized IT companies will have a working optical drive at disposal (just like tape players and sloppy drives).
  - Tepix 4y ago
    I had a Toshiba Blu-ray player that i didn't use for 3+ years and it had the same issue.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago
  Like cassete drives, unless they're particularly high end units (unlikely) they will most likely have rotten/badly conformed belts and seized lubricants by the time you want to recover your data.
- Tepix 4y ago
  As long as optical drives are still being built, you should be good (and perhaps ~5 years after that). Once it's obvious that the most recently built drives that can read the media are getting unreliable (due to their age), it's time to switch to a new medium.
lmarcos 4y ago
Any recommendations regarding blue ray vendors and disc readers?
- IYasha 4y ago
  As if there are many ) Drives: Pioneer. Lite-On stopped manufacturing them, AFAIK. Discs: M-Discs are made only by Verbatim/Milleniata factory. Quality of the usual BD-Rs varies. Sometimes you can get decent disks from CMC. But not LTH.
fsckboy 4y ago
I don't understand the lengths people go to undoubtedly discover they can't read what they've saved because they failed to read the future. Just read the present. SSDs are big enough now that one can hold everything I want. If you want to go bigger for your downloaded movie collection you're never going to watch, whatever your scale, ok you have that many 14TB hard disks. two years from now, the newer model SSDs and hard disks are going to be much bigger. I'm about to jump to 4TB. Buy them. Copy your stuff to them. The old ones? there's your offsite back up. No bit rot because you're going to do it again, soon. lather, rinse, repeat. interfaces and formats change? you won't even notice. Too expensive? Don't use the latest most expensive size, use the last model each time. Yes it's slightly smaller, you said you wanted to save money. really long term storage: keep doing it, takes a few hours each year. need something fancier, visit it every month.
- universa1 4y ago
  Hmm... Iirc SSDs need to be powered up regularly. So storing them for years time might work, but also given the rise of qlc SSDs I wouldn't trust them for longer-term offline storage.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    I didn't mention it but it's a good practice to test backups to make sure that they are still backups. Choose the time interval you are comfortable with and visit your offsite backups, make sure they match your current storage. I do not recommend "longer term", I suggested swapping your old drive for a new one every two years, that's the length of the term. I do every year, because that's how often I buy stuff, but I didn't want others to say "too expensive"
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    Can confirm. SSD are volatile storage. It's pretty much the worst option for long term backups. I believe the spec only demands persistence if they're powered on at least once every 90 days, the same applies to USB sticks btw. The data isn't lost after 90days, but bit rot occurs at a highly accelerated frequency. So you might not notice or care if there is a gray pixel in your image you've stored on your USB stick, but that's what it means to use volatile storage.
justsomehnguy 4y ago
I have bought NEC DVD/RW ND-4570A unit back in the day (and MFG date is Jan 2006). Somewhere between 2014 and 2018 I needed to read a CD/R, so I plugged it in and... nothing. I tested other discs, including factory made ones but looks like optics are dead in it. Sure, that time I could read the CD on ThinkPad X301 I had lying around, and I think I used it again circa 2020, but it still has a chance of just dying and then I wouldn't be able to read any of my not so big but still a collection of CDs/DVDs. Sometimes I fancy myself buying a USB DVD/BD drive... but just like I need to search the whole apartment to find that X301 (I have no idea where it is now again) I would not only need to find that drive (and it is even easier to lose it than a 13" laptop) but it can just die like my NEC one. So if you reaaly need some data, not only you should use appropriate media, you should have the means to read it back and that means should be redundant. Same applies to LTO, because while you still can find anything since LTO3 on eBay, there is no guarantee what it would work at all, because the drives are quite finicky and have a limited life-span in tearms of read/write cycles.
- IYasha 4y ago
  I can tell you a secret: it's ususlly not the optics that are failing. -||-
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    Does that matter for me, who doesn't know from which side I should take a soldering iron? *grin* But considering everything else worked (it actually tried to read, just couldn't) it's something in optics or it's electronic parts, so it doesn't really change anything for me - it's unrepairable by myself and, without a spare/donor, by anyone else.
IYasha 4y ago
Agree. I've been researching data retention for many years and, except for Rosetta projects, there are no better user-friendly ways than using M-Discs for storing digital data. But there's a "but". You need a reader. If you don't, you need a microscope and deep knowledge of how data is stored on all OSI levels. From laser frequency to JPEG compression algorithms. In this case Rosetta analog microprinting wins.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  When picking the archival medium, you have to also optimize for how people will read it in the future, yes. No point in having a disc survive 300 years if no one has working blu-ray readers at that point. You would have been better off with microscopic text etched into metal, or plain old paper. Or maybe some variation in between like metal sheets with stamped out QR-codes that do light compression reversible by humans manually into english and numbers.
crabbone 4y ago
The price of the hardware is only the beginning. You need more things: 1. Develop a storage system with "consistency groups" so that you are able to take a snapshot from a distributed storage system in a consistent state. 2. Keep investing into such a system as you probably want to add to your archives on a regular basis. 3. Pay for physical storage of whatever you are storing (i.e. pay rent, electricity bills, salaries for people who come to check on your archives).
- IYasha 4y ago
  About the storage... I actually had and idea of finding a stainless steel cylindrical lunchbox (hermetic, thermally isolated by vacuum inside walls). But forgot about that ) Putting a spindle of discs inside such container would be enough to protect them for decades, I think. Could even survive flooding. Not lava, tough :) (if anyone finds such 12+cm container on chinese stores, I'd be very grateful)
stateofinquiry 4y ago
This is exactly my strategy as well. Unattended, I don't think its viable for century + scale (as indicated by comments below re: formats, drives breaking, etc), but I do believe it will work for decades (2? 5? not sure). The stability is a benefit compared to cloud company or SSD/HDD life spans- but clearly does not solve all the problems.

by Tepix 4y ago

8fingerlouie 4y ago

I have the same long time archiving strategy. Every year i burn an identical set of discs with the past years photos, and store them in separate locations. I use a mix of 25GB and 100GB discs, depending on the previous years photo activity (Covid-19 years fit on 25GB discs :D ) I also maintain a couple of external drives at the same locations that are surface scanned/updated/rotated yearly. I use no form of encryption or archiving software, and while some discs have a PAR2 file "embedded" this is not my regular practice. I don't want to be in a situation 20 years from now where i've forgotten the encryption password to my archive (though in 20 years todays encryption will probably be "trivial" to break) > They also seem to get harder to find I have noticed the same, and i hope that the industry realizes that there is a need for long term archiving at a consumer level price. Considering that all family photos these days are essentially all digital, there is either the option to archive it, or make physical copies, which is something i have considered as well. When it comes to documents, i make normal backups, but i don't archive them. The archive is disaster recovery, and if everything else has failed (including 3-2-1 backups), i doubt my 10+ year old documents are worth anything to me. Anything important exists in government databases and/or as physical copies. This may of course not be the case for everybody.

onion2k 4y ago

Make sure to keep an external optical drive with USB-C around as well. I know that none of my PCs from the last 5 years had a builtin optical drive. I think finding a device to read the media is likely to be a bigger challenge than finding media that lasts 100 years. I strongly doubt a normal Blu-ray player would last that long unless it was kept in a controlled environment.

mrpopo 4y ago
Yes. I kept my external blu-ray player in bubble-wrap in a drawer for the last 5 years with no use for it. When I tried plugging it in last year, it was no longer working (clicking noise, probably from one of the motors). In 20 years, absolutely no one except maybe specialized IT companies will have a working optical drive at disposal (just like tape players and sloppy drives).
- Tepix 4y ago
  I had a Toshiba Blu-ray player that i didn't use for 3+ years and it had the same issue.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
Like cassete drives, unless they're particularly high end units (unlikely) they will most likely have rotten/badly conformed belts and seized lubricants by the time you want to recover your data.
Tepix 4y ago
As long as optical drives are still being built, you should be good (and perhaps ~5 years after that). Once it's obvious that the most recently built drives that can read the media are getting unreliable (due to their age), it's time to switch to a new medium.

lmarcos 4y ago

Any recommendations regarding blue ray vendors and disc readers?

IYasha 4y ago
As if there are many ) Drives: Pioneer. Lite-On stopped manufacturing them, AFAIK. Discs: M-Discs are made only by Verbatim/Milleniata factory. Quality of the usual BD-Rs varies. Sometimes you can get decent disks from CMC. But not LTH.

fsckboy 4y ago

I don't understand the lengths people go to undoubtedly discover they can't read what they've saved because they failed to read the future. Just read the present. SSDs are big enough now that one can hold everything I want. If you want to go bigger for your downloaded movie collection you're never going to watch, whatever your scale, ok you have that many 14TB hard disks. two years from now, the newer model SSDs and hard disks are going to be much bigger. I'm about to jump to 4TB. Buy them. Copy your stuff to them. The old ones? there's your offsite back up. No bit rot because you're going to do it again, soon. lather, rinse, repeat. interfaces and formats change? you won't even notice. Too expensive? Don't use the latest most expensive size, use the last model each time. Yes it's slightly smaller, you said you wanted to save money. really long term storage: keep doing it, takes a few hours each year. need something fancier, visit it every month.

universa1 4y ago
Hmm... Iirc SSDs need to be powered up regularly. So storing them for years time might work, but also given the rise of qlc SSDs I wouldn't trust them for longer-term offline storage.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  I didn't mention it but it's a good practice to test backups to make sure that they are still backups. Choose the time interval you are comfortable with and visit your offsite backups, make sure they match your current storage. I do not recommend "longer term", I suggested swapping your old drive for a new one every two years, that's the length of the term. I do every year, because that's how often I buy stuff, but I didn't want others to say "too expensive"
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  Can confirm. SSD are volatile storage. It's pretty much the worst option for long term backups. I believe the spec only demands persistence if they're powered on at least once every 90 days, the same applies to USB sticks btw. The data isn't lost after 90days, but bit rot occurs at a highly accelerated frequency. So you might not notice or care if there is a gray pixel in your image you've stored on your USB stick, but that's what it means to use volatile storage.

justsomehnguy 4y ago

I have bought NEC DVD/RW ND-4570A unit back in the day (and MFG date is Jan 2006). Somewhere between 2014 and 2018 I needed to read a CD/R, so I plugged it in and... nothing. I tested other discs, including factory made ones but looks like optics are dead in it. Sure, that time I could read the CD on ThinkPad X301 I had lying around, and I think I used it again circa 2020, but it still has a chance of just dying and then I wouldn't be able to read any of my not so big but still a collection of CDs/DVDs. Sometimes I fancy myself buying a USB DVD/BD drive... but just like I need to search the whole apartment to find that X301 (I have no idea where it is now again) I would not only need to find that drive (and it is even easier to lose it than a 13" laptop) but it can just die like my NEC one. So if you reaaly need some data, not only you should use appropriate media, you should have the means to read it back and that means should be redundant. Same applies to LTO, because while you still can find anything since LTO3 on eBay, there is no guarantee what it would work at all, because the drives are quite finicky and have a limited life-span in tearms of read/write cycles.

IYasha 4y ago
I can tell you a secret: it's ususlly not the optics that are failing. -||-
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Does that matter for me, who doesn't know from which side I should take a soldering iron? *grin* But considering everything else worked (it actually tried to read, just couldn't) it's something in optics or it's electronic parts, so it doesn't really change anything for me - it's unrepairable by myself and, without a spare/donor, by anyone else.

IYasha 4y ago

Agree. I've been researching data retention for many years and, except for Rosetta projects, there are no better user-friendly ways than using M-Discs for storing digital data. But there's a "but". You need a reader. If you don't, you need a microscope and deep knowledge of how data is stored on all OSI levels. From laser frequency to JPEG compression algorithms. In this case Rosetta analog microprinting wins.

antisthenes 4y ago
When picking the archival medium, you have to also optimize for how people will read it in the future, yes. No point in having a disc survive 300 years if no one has working blu-ray readers at that point. You would have been better off with microscopic text etched into metal, or plain old paper. Or maybe some variation in between like metal sheets with stamped out QR-codes that do light compression reversible by humans manually into english and numbers.

crabbone 4y ago

The price of the hardware is only the beginning. You need more things: 1. Develop a storage system with "consistency groups" so that you are able to take a snapshot from a distributed storage system in a consistent state. 2. Keep investing into such a system as you probably want to add to your archives on a regular basis. 3. Pay for physical storage of whatever you are storing (i.e. pay rent, electricity bills, salaries for people who come to check on your archives).

IYasha 4y ago
About the storage... I actually had and idea of finding a stainless steel cylindrical lunchbox (hermetic, thermally isolated by vacuum inside walls). But forgot about that ) Putting a spindle of discs inside such container would be enough to protect them for decades, I think. Could even survive flooding. Not lava, tough :) (if anyone finds such 12+cm container on chinese stores, I'd be very grateful)

stateofinquiry 4y ago

This is exactly my strategy as well. Unattended, I don't think its viable for century + scale (as indicated by comments below re: formats, drives breaking, etc), but I do believe it will work for decades (2? 5? not sure). The stability is a benefit compared to cloud company or SSD/HDD life spans- but clearly does not solve all the problems.