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Carefully stored CDs and DVDs retain their contents for far longer than hard drives. I have several external HDs that are no longer readable. Yet DVDs burnt on

Carefully stored CDs and DVDs retain their contents for far longer than hard drives. I have several external HDs that are no longer readable. Yet DVDs burnt on a 2009 MBP still read fine with an external DVD drive. I have some early USB keys that no longer work, so I doubt that flash sticks or even SSDs are useful for backup for more than 10 years.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Blu-rays are underrated for archival. 25GB or 50GB broadly available, almost impervious to scratches, even more resistant to degradation. Alas, the DRM for the movie side left a foul taste everywhere…
- vel0city 3y ago
  100GB Blu-Rays are pretty easy to find as well.
  - epcoa 3y ago
    They’re expensive as fuck though thanks to no investment in disc media. You can get them for what $12.50 a piece if you’re lucky and I’ve heard it’s only worse in Europe. That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives. Buy just 6 or 7 and store them offsite and you have something that is more robust. Once you hit the 50TB level it becomes economical to look into late gen LTO (tape), perfectly good LTO-7 drives can be had for cheap.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      You can get them for what $12.50 a piece That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives Where are you seeing $1 100GB hard drives, or $10 1TB ones?
      - zamfi 3y ago
        Nowhere, of course -- but 20TB drives can be had for a bit over $300 these days, that's $15/TB, not too far off.
      - epcoa 3y ago
        Ok granted since last time I bought prices have shifted significantly, HDD prices up. A reputable (verbatim) brand of 25 BDXL is $250, and a Seagate 20TB $320 (tho $280 if you’re willing to go OEM). I did not mean to exaggerate, but this is still a crazy per GB cost differential for what is basically some plastic and dye.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      Verbatim BDXL 100GB M-DISC 25 pack for $260. https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-98914-M-Disc-100GB-Surface/dp/B017H13DFS/ https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-98914-M-Disc-100GB-Surface/d... $260 / 25 = $10.40/disc. $10.40 / 100 = $0.104/GB. A decent 2TB HDD can be had for as low as like $60. $60/2000 = $0.03/GB. 10.4 / 3 = 3.46, so pretty far from 12x the cost. So realistically you could get three and a half-ish hard drives per gig compared to 100GB Blu-Rays. I do agree, 100GB Blu-Rays do seem to be overpriced in some ways. I often end up using 25GB or 50GB discs as they're a lot cheaper and I often find I don't have another 100GB of data needing to backup. I mostly just wanted to point out its an option. I wouldn't really compare them to hard drives in the end though. With optical media, its a disc that if stored even halfway decently will hold your data for longer than your great grandchildren's lives without needing to touch it or think about it again. A magnetic HDD has moving parts that will eventually wear out, magnetic surfaces that will lose their charge, need to be validated and re-checked and eventually copied over before failure. They're very physically resistant and very light weight. Dropping my CD case on the ground isn't likely to harm any of the data stored within, dropping a hard drive is likely to cause irrecoverable damage. Its way easier to mail to a distant family member to hold on to for long term distant storage. I can't easily mess up while copying the data and corrupt or delete it. The data is physically, permanently etched into the media. So no, I wouldn't say having 6 or 7 hard drives is more robust to having two burned Blu-Rays stored in two physically different locations in terms of trying to store the data for 50+ years. There's a lot of things to like about using optical media for archival storage. And yeah, if you're truly dealing with many dozens of TBs of storage you're needing to archive tape starts to make some sense, but I'd be more worried about procuring a tape drive able to read my tapes in 25+ years compared to finding some random Blu-Ray drive on eBay. Blu-Ray drives have been pretty mass market for a long time and will probably still be widely made for the next several years, meanwhile LTO drives are only really sold to enterprises in much smaller numbers. Also, lots of issues with backwards compatibility with LTO, so your options for getting the right drive is trickier. I'd imagine most home users are nowhere near there, and even a 25-50GB Blu-Ray a year/quarter would cover most of their data they actually care about.
      - epcoa 3y ago
        A 20TB drive can be had for $280 now. I do think in these discussions Blu-ray resilience tends to be overstated: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/LhUnX4i3L6 https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/LhUnX4i3L6 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/res-2017-0016/html?lang=en https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/res-2017-0016... > The data is physically, permanently etched into the media This is hyperbole. Conventional Blu-Rays recordables and even M-Discs do not work this way, they work via phase change in an inorganic compound (or cheaper versions use organic dyes). Etched into the media makes it sound like a pressed product, which it is not, but that is another thing that needs to be considered: the substrate is not impervious to breakdown. These are also subject to QC problems. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/Na6F6lUFiL https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/Na6F6lUFiL There are very few suppliers of actually worthwhile Blu-ray media, and it is difficult to sort out what is real vs marketing mumbo jumbo. Verbatim (CMC) changed their M-Discs in 2019 with a “it’s just as good, trust us”. In any case if you need reliable optical backups you should be testing the burn quality. Many don’t do this, but then how do you know the disc has sufficient signal margin? This is specialist knowledge, which is why let’s be honest, most home users are going to best be served outsourcing this to a 3rd party. Perhaps make some Blu-ray’s as a supplement, but it is too easy to overstate the reliability of any one backup method, or losing sight of the big picture for one simple solution. Joe average home user should be considering a 3rd party service and even nerds can use tarsnap or something. Backup and preservation are systems, not a method. People underestimate the difficulty, effort and expertise, “home” users suck at it (as they should), most people need to outsource it. It doesn’t matter that the Blu-ray has 1000 years theoretical longevity if you burned garbage, and just getting people to the 10 year mark is tough. The only reason shorter time horizons are reliable is because of the massive uptake of cloud storage. Blu-ray’s have their place I agree but it’s limited as a primary backup.
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  Enterprise is moving away from tape to optical for archival (or so I've heard). It is rumered that AWS S3 glacier is mostly optical storage, for example.
  - epcoa 3y ago
    > It is rumered that AWS S3 glacier is mostly optical storage, for example. Really? I heard that about a decade ago, the analysis barely made sense then but it seems even less sensible now. At Amazon scale tape is 0.5 cent/GB or less, hard drives are more expensive but easier to work with. Data storage on Blu-ray is tiny, still needs robotics.
    - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
      >hard drives are more expensive but easier to work with But maintenance is much lower for optical. You can't just put those hard drives in a warehouse and forget about them. And BDXL is 100GB per disk. I don't know if the cost benefit makes sense here but it does seem somewhat possible.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - wmf 3y ago
    Most optical archive products seem to have been discontinued.
- gamepsys 3y ago
  I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to use a laser to etch bits onto optical media for a measly 50gb. Maybe I'm jaded with my fiber internet, 1tb sd cards, and 20tb hdds but 50gb feels like an incredibly small amount of data.
  - Mistletoe 3y ago
    It matters how important the data is. It looks like my entire google photos archive is only 45gb and it would feel nice knowing it was saved somewhere else in a very stable format.
    - gamepsys 3y ago
      If it's really important you'd have multiple copies in different regions and regularly check integrity and the storage medium isn't a large concern.
- skhr0680 3y ago
  > Alas, the DRM for the movie side left a foul taste everywhere… 4.7 GB was worth the cost and effort in 2004. 25GB in 2008? Not really.
thesuitonym 3y ago
Burned CDs/DVDs/BDs have a pretty long shelf-life, but the pressed ones (that you can still buy at stores!) will last much, much longer. The question will be how long can we keep buying players/readers.
adastra22 3y ago
Are you sure? Most studies have shown the oppsoite. Or at least there’s a lot resting on the phrase “Carefully stored”. There are lots of ways CDs can rot in storage, not all of which are controllable or preventable.
- jjav 3y ago
  My oldest CD-Rs are from 1994 and they still read perfectly. Factory pressed CDs should last longer than CD-Rs (I've read).
  - al_borland 3y ago
    Last time I looked into it there was a lot of variability. It seemed some of it came down to care, and some of it was just luck. If you care about the stuff in those 1994 CD-Rs and don’t have a backup, it may be worth making a copy while they still work. It could last the rest of your life and be fine… or not.
    - jjav 3y ago
      Yes, the contents of those CD-Rs are definitely on my zfs pool, so don't really care if the CDs die. But I keep them around and occasionally read them out of curiosity to see how long they last.
ijhuygft776 3y ago
2009 is very recent... I have HDDs from that era that are still readable...

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Blu-rays are underrated for archival. 25GB or 50GB broadly available, almost impervious to scratches, even more resistant to degradation. Alas, the DRM for the movie side left a foul taste everywhere…

vel0city 3y ago
100GB Blu-Rays are pretty easy to find as well.
- epcoa 3y ago
  They’re expensive as fuck though thanks to no investment in disc media. You can get them for what $12.50 a piece if you’re lucky and I’ve heard it’s only worse in Europe. That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives. Buy just 6 or 7 and store them offsite and you have something that is more robust. Once you hit the 50TB level it becomes economical to look into late gen LTO (tape), perfectly good LTO-7 drives can be had for cheap.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    You can get them for what $12.50 a piece That’s 12 times the cost of hard drives Where are you seeing $1 100GB hard drives, or $10 1TB ones?
    - zamfi 3y ago
      Nowhere, of course -- but 20TB drives can be had for a bit over $300 these days, that's $15/TB, not too far off.
    - epcoa 3y ago
      Ok granted since last time I bought prices have shifted significantly, HDD prices up. A reputable (verbatim) brand of 25 BDXL is $250, and a Seagate 20TB $320 (tho $280 if you’re willing to go OEM). I did not mean to exaggerate, but this is still a crazy per GB cost differential for what is basically some plastic and dye.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Verbatim BDXL 100GB M-DISC 25 pack for $260. https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-98914-M-Disc-100GB-Surface/dp/B017H13DFS/ https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-98914-M-Disc-100GB-Surface/d... $260 / 25 = $10.40/disc. $10.40 / 100 = $0.104/GB. A decent 2TB HDD can be had for as low as like $60. $60/2000 = $0.03/GB. 10.4 / 3 = 3.46, so pretty far from 12x the cost. So realistically you could get three and a half-ish hard drives per gig compared to 100GB Blu-Rays. I do agree, 100GB Blu-Rays do seem to be overpriced in some ways. I often end up using 25GB or 50GB discs as they're a lot cheaper and I often find I don't have another 100GB of data needing to backup. I mostly just wanted to point out its an option. I wouldn't really compare them to hard drives in the end though. With optical media, its a disc that if stored even halfway decently will hold your data for longer than your great grandchildren's lives without needing to touch it or think about it again. A magnetic HDD has moving parts that will eventually wear out, magnetic surfaces that will lose their charge, need to be validated and re-checked and eventually copied over before failure. They're very physically resistant and very light weight. Dropping my CD case on the ground isn't likely to harm any of the data stored within, dropping a hard drive is likely to cause irrecoverable damage. Its way easier to mail to a distant family member to hold on to for long term distant storage. I can't easily mess up while copying the data and corrupt or delete it. The data is physically, permanently etched into the media. So no, I wouldn't say having 6 or 7 hard drives is more robust to having two burned Blu-Rays stored in two physically different locations in terms of trying to store the data for 50+ years. There's a lot of things to like about using optical media for archival storage. And yeah, if you're truly dealing with many dozens of TBs of storage you're needing to archive tape starts to make some sense, but I'd be more worried about procuring a tape drive able to read my tapes in 25+ years compared to finding some random Blu-Ray drive on eBay. Blu-Ray drives have been pretty mass market for a long time and will probably still be widely made for the next several years, meanwhile LTO drives are only really sold to enterprises in much smaller numbers. Also, lots of issues with backwards compatibility with LTO, so your options for getting the right drive is trickier. I'd imagine most home users are nowhere near there, and even a 25-50GB Blu-Ray a year/quarter would cover most of their data they actually care about.
    - epcoa 3y ago
      A 20TB drive can be had for $280 now. I do think in these discussions Blu-ray resilience tends to be overstated: https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/LhUnX4i3L6 https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/LhUnX4i3L6 https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/res-2017-0016/html?lang=en https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/res-2017-0016... > The data is physically, permanently etched into the media This is hyperbole. Conventional Blu-Rays recordables and even M-Discs do not work this way, they work via phase change in an inorganic compound (or cheaper versions use organic dyes). Etched into the media makes it sound like a pressed product, which it is not, but that is another thing that needs to be considered: the substrate is not impervious to breakdown. These are also subject to QC problems. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/Na6F6lUFiL https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/s/Na6F6lUFiL There are very few suppliers of actually worthwhile Blu-ray media, and it is difficult to sort out what is real vs marketing mumbo jumbo. Verbatim (CMC) changed their M-Discs in 2019 with a “it’s just as good, trust us”. In any case if you need reliable optical backups you should be testing the burn quality. Many don’t do this, but then how do you know the disc has sufficient signal margin? This is specialist knowledge, which is why let’s be honest, most home users are going to best be served outsourcing this to a 3rd party. Perhaps make some Blu-ray’s as a supplement, but it is too easy to overstate the reliability of any one backup method, or losing sight of the big picture for one simple solution. Joe average home user should be considering a 3rd party service and even nerds can use tarsnap or something. Backup and preservation are systems, not a method. People underestimate the difficulty, effort and expertise, “home” users suck at it (as they should), most people need to outsource it. It doesn’t matter that the Blu-ray has 1000 years theoretical longevity if you burned garbage, and just getting people to the 10 year mark is tough. The only reason shorter time horizons are reliable is because of the massive uptake of cloud storage. Blu-ray’s have their place I agree but it’s limited as a primary backup.
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
Enterprise is moving away from tape to optical for archival (or so I've heard). It is rumered that AWS S3 glacier is mostly optical storage, for example.
- epcoa 3y ago
  > It is rumered that AWS S3 glacier is mostly optical storage, for example. Really? I heard that about a decade ago, the analysis barely made sense then but it seems even less sensible now. At Amazon scale tape is 0.5 cent/GB or less, hard drives are more expensive but easier to work with. Data storage on Blu-ray is tiny, still needs robotics.
  - Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
    >hard drives are more expensive but easier to work with But maintenance is much lower for optical. You can't just put those hard drives in a warehouse and forget about them. And BDXL is 100GB per disk. I don't know if the cost benefit makes sense here but it does seem somewhat possible.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- wmf 3y ago
  Most optical archive products seem to have been discontinued.
gamepsys 3y ago
I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to use a laser to etch bits onto optical media for a measly 50gb. Maybe I'm jaded with my fiber internet, 1tb sd cards, and 20tb hdds but 50gb feels like an incredibly small amount of data.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  It matters how important the data is. It looks like my entire google photos archive is only 45gb and it would feel nice knowing it was saved somewhere else in a very stable format.
  - gamepsys 3y ago
    If it's really important you'd have multiple copies in different regions and regularly check integrity and the storage medium isn't a large concern.
skhr0680 3y ago
> Alas, the DRM for the movie side left a foul taste everywhere… 4.7 GB was worth the cost and effort in 2004. 25GB in 2008? Not really.

thesuitonym 3y ago

Burned CDs/DVDs/BDs have a pretty long shelf-life, but the pressed ones (that you can still buy at stores!) will last much, much longer. The question will be how long can we keep buying players/readers.

adastra22 3y ago

Are you sure? Most studies have shown the oppsoite. Or at least there’s a lot resting on the phrase “Carefully stored”. There are lots of ways CDs can rot in storage, not all of which are controllable or preventable.

jjav 3y ago
My oldest CD-Rs are from 1994 and they still read perfectly. Factory pressed CDs should last longer than CD-Rs (I've read).
- al_borland 3y ago
  Last time I looked into it there was a lot of variability. It seemed some of it came down to care, and some of it was just luck. If you care about the stuff in those 1994 CD-Rs and don’t have a backup, it may be worth making a copy while they still work. It could last the rest of your life and be fine… or not.
  - jjav 3y ago
    Yes, the contents of those CD-Rs are definitely on my zfs pool, so don't really care if the CDs die. But I keep them around and occasionally read them out of curiosity to see how long they last.

ijhuygft776 3y ago

2009 is very recent... I have HDDs from that era that are still readable...