M-Disc File storage Archiving, etc

[Sonik Wiz]

Elsewhere on the forum is a post requesting info on a cheap universal disc player. It is growing quite large due mainly to the off topic comments. One of those was mine, mentioning the value of M-Disc for archival storage. @jimfisheye replied to my post with some points worth responding to but that would've drifted the thread even further off course. I will only excerpt the points I want to reply to in Jim's post, but I don't want anything taken out of context so you can read it in it's entirety in post #103.

Jim Said:

M-disc... Wasn't that the one that cost even more than 2" tape?

I don't think so. But then I don't know how much 2" tape costs, or the cost of a machine to use it compared to a disc burner. Do you have anything to substantiate this remark?

Pretty sure I've read the 1000 years claim from nearly every CDR, DVDR, and BDR brand ever made at some point.

Nope. Don't think so. The only brand I can recall in the early days claiming increased longevity was the Kodak brand gold colored CD's. And they did not claim it would last a1,000 years.

M-Disc meets the requirements for archival storage by passing tests from both ISO and ECMA. They seem to be similar in testing by utilizing accelerated ageing but the fact that two independent standards orgs agree lends a lot of cred to M-Disc's claims. These tests I can't duplicate, or would feel the need to, but I ran across an informal test, the kind that an inquisitive QQ'er might do. This was done by someone named Mol Smith in the UK and compares a TDK disc to an M-Disc in a harsh outdoor environment. Pretty interesting.

Speaking of Kodak, I spent most of my career in some field of photography and I see some similarities between film types and optical disc types. The most popular film types were color negative like Kodacolor, Vericolor or slide film types like Ektachrome. Then there were emusions such as Kodachrome or print paper types like Ilford Cibachrome. The former group has organic color dyes in it just like standard CD/DVD/BR disc & like anything organic does not last a 1,000 years. Kodachrome & Cibachrome are made with non-organic dyes & with proper storage will look brand new for generations. The M-Disc data layer is made with
non-organic dyes also, mainly from a material called Glassy Carbon. In reading up on this I see the data layer on an M-Disc in optimum storage would be expected last 10,000 years! But the polycarbonate component starts to degrade after only after 1,000 years so I guess M-Disc is conservative in making their claims.

I never tried M-disc BDRs because they cost more than 2" tape and my bs detector was making noise.

Again, looking forward to how you validate this claim because sometimes my BS detector goes off too.

 

[stoopid]

Thanks for sharing more info on the product. I'm aware of it but the cost of a new burner and the discs themselves (when I have stacks of blanks already) prevented me from getting fully onboard. I could see dumping my legacy blanks and burner if the data was more valuable to me than it objectively is. In a decade or so my existing stock of blanks and burner will be outdated, the blanks may even start failing to verify after a burn, so maybe then I'll get onboard and maybe then it will be cheaper too!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Thanks for sharing more info on the product. I'm aware of it but the cost of a new burner and the discs themselves (when I have stacks of blanks already) prevented me from getting fully onboard. I could see dumping my legacy blanks and burner if the data was more valuable to me than it objectively is. In a decade or so my existing stock of blanks and burner will be outdated, the blanks may even start failing to verify after a burn, so maybe then I'll get onboard and maybe then it will be cheaper too!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

Haha sounds like you've got quite the inventory of discs waiting to be recorded. The cost of a new burner isn't that significant & the M-Disc burner requires a stronger laser. Since electromecahnical things have nowhere to go but downhill with continued use I like that laser burner might have a little extra ooomph to it. I have a regular CD/DVD/BR burner that is Pioneer and the M Disc unit is an LG. If you've ever used Exact Audio Copy it has a way of checking for best quality between multiple burners. It always picks the LG.

As for cost coming down over time, maybe not. I remember when these M-Discs first came out I could not justify the cost vs need. Then sometime around pre-pandemic I noticed the price dropped quite a bit & I purchased large spindles of the single layer DVD's & Blu-rays. Usually I just buy 'em off the shelf at the local Microcenter. But today I checked cost at Newegg where anyone might be more inclined to purchase.

I checked the 10 count packages which is the cheapest initial outlay but worst over all for per disc cost. The 4.7GB DVD was $4.30 each and the 25GB Blu-ray was $4.00 each. That seems high to me but than I might spend $30 on a Blu-Ray Audio of Supertramp. Aren't somethings from my family history or AV projects as important to me as a Supertramp album? Yup.

 

[stoopid]

Haha sounds like you've got quite the inventory of discs waiting to be recorded. The cost of a new burner isn't that significant & the M-Disc burner requires a stronger laser. Since electromecahnical things have nowhere to go but downhill with continued use I like that laser burner might have a little extra ooomph to it. I have a regular CD/DVD/BR burner that is Pioneer and the M Disc unit is an LG. If you've ever used Exact Audio Copy it has a way of checking for best quality between multiple burners. It always picks the LG.

As for cost coming down over time, maybe not. I remember when these M-Discs first came out I could not justify the cost vs need. Then sometime around pre-pandemic I noticed the price dropped quite a bit & I purchased large spindles of the single layer DVD's & Blu-rays. Usually I just buy 'em off the shelf at the local Microcenter. But today I checked cost at Newegg where anyone might be more inclined to purchase.

I checked the 10 count packages which is the cheapest initial outlay but worst over all for per disc cost. The 4.7GB DVD was $4.30 each and the 25GB Blu-ray was $4.00 each. That seems high to me but than I might spend $30 on a Blu-Ray Audio of Supertramp. Aren't somethings from my family history or AV projects as important to me as a Supertramp album? Yup.

I read on the Wiki page that the DVDs are expensive because there's few companies making them, so low supply. IIRC the blank m-disc Blurays were $3 when I was looking into them, I think right around 2019 when you bought yours.

Yeah I work in IT and have had several clients retire their old processes and gift me their blank spindles, some sealed. I have CD-R, Lightscribe CD-Rs, DVD+R, DVD-R, Dual layer DVDs, BD-R, and dual layer BDR ready to roll at a moment's notice. I think I have 150 blank CDs and 300-400 blank DVD/BRs. lol

 

[mandrix]

I have a few hundred, now mostly worthless to me , CD blanks. I just bought a new 25 count spindle of PlexDisc 25GB BD's and still have 10 or 15 BD-DL discs.
Most all are inkjet printable. I believe I still have a few old lightscribe discs but abandoned that for printing directly to disc with my inkjet printer.
Number of DVD and DVD DL is unknown, but surely several hundred inkjet printable discs in several brands.

I abandoned Verbatim a few years ago when the DVD-DL discs shot up to over $80/spindle and I started getting more coasters, same with the BD-DL discs. I always burn discs at a slow speed, especially DL discs. I've had Verbatim discs manufactured at several different countries/facilities over the years but it seemed the quality was going down.

Ritek makes a lot of discs that are rebranded, e.g. PlexDisc, and I buy the Ritex name brand sometimes in 25GB flavor.

Looking at the inkjet printable 25GB M-disc still a little pricey to me, and I have not seen but may exist in the "glossy" version I prefer for printing disc labels.
Having said all that, it appears for archival purposes the M-disc carbon discs probably are worthwhile for long term storage. At my age I don't really see a need outside curiosity. Perhaps if they'd been around 20 years ago.

We could be living at a time when physical media, i.e. optical discs, might be on their last round. I still do burn discs but HDD storage with backup is still my favorite archival medium. My Daughter, who is almost 49, cares not for my large surround collection in any format. So it goes.

 

[stoopid]

... HDD storage with backup is still my favorite archival medium. My Daughter, who is almost 49, cares not for my large surround collection in any format. So it goes.

Same here, but I'm just turning 49 soon so I'm expecting wanting to ensure access to some of this original data (my own music projects and projects I've worked on with/for others), as well as all my photography, for at least the next 20 years. At some point though its importance will wane if it's not gifted to someone else who shares in its value.

There will always need to be some form of electromagnetic immune storage solution, and for data these optical discs are the most robust and cost effective. We won't be able to guarantee daily snapshots of the internet to bluray, but critical works of art and documentation can certainly be archived in the event of some natural or human caused catastrophe. I figure for the nominal cost and effort/time necessary, I mind as well keep the things I've created/own digitally archived in a fire safe.

In IT the greatest regrets we see with clients who face some type of intrusion or fire/water catastrophe is lack of robust backups. It serves as a reminder for me to value the things important to me enough to have a functional copy. What that means for each of us is determined by our values and priorities. I have very little of my extensive retail music collection backed up, but it is insured under a specific collectibles plan I carry. If it's lost and I can't get it all back, oh well. But losing the masters of my personal music and pictures -- hell no.

 

[mandrix]

I'm glad that I started ripping early. To have to go back now and do all those discs from scratch would never happen. The goal from many years back was to use a pc, or what I called a HTPC back when, as playback device. Man, it was a royal pita years ago to play some mch music on a pc. I fought with XMBC on and off and sent it off to mch hell. lav codecs and all.

I bought 2 Creative ZS cards (SB0350), and the bundled software allowed playback of DVDA discs. Heaven!

Though PowerDVD dropped DVDA playback, and never supported SACD, at least there are options with Foobar now.
I wish there had existed a method for ripping Quad back in the day. Well, obtainable. No personal computers, just analog recording devices.

Life with music now is so good, compared with years ago, it's almost unreal.

Any of you remember when QQ members were using Creative DTS-610's to record Quad to DTS? I still have mine.

Life is good!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I'm glad that I started ripping early. To have to go back now and do all those discs from scratch would never happen. The goal from many years back was to use a pc, or what I called a HTPC back when, as playback device. Man, it was a royal pita years ago to play some mch music on a pc. I fought with XMBC on and off and sent it off to mch hell. lav codecs and all.

I bought 2 Creative ZS cards (SB0350), and the bundled software allowed playback of DVDA discs. Heaven!

Though PowerDVD dropped DVDA playback, and never supported SACD, at least there are options with Foobar now.
I wish there had existed a method for ripping Quad back in the day. Well, obtainable. No personal computers, just analog recording devices.

Life with music now is so good, compared with years ago, it's almost unreal.

Any of you remember when QQ members were using Creative DTS-610's to record Quad to DTS? I still have mine.

Life is good!

I had forgotten about the Creative DTS-610! It seemed like a unique solution for the time... just convert everything analog to DTS. I went the route of buying a M-Audio Delta 1010 box, saved as WAV files & DTS encoded via Surcode. I did all my Moody Blues Q4's and others that way & still happy to listen to them today.

You're right, ripping analog back in the day meant simply moving one type of analog format to another analog format. I also did this pretty darn often. Buy a quad album, play it once to "clean the grooves" and record R2R on my Sony. Then just play the tapes.

 

[jimfisheye]

Just saw this thread.

I guess I should know that attempted humor and sarcasm don't translate well online. But here we are.

I think the M-discs were around $20 each when first introduced. So you know, too expensive kind of like the absurd cost of 2" tape for 24 track machines. Anyway, I posted this reply in the other thread:

Looks like either 25GB BDR M-disc for just over $2.50 ea or 100GB BDXL M-disc for just over $10 ea. Same price byte for byte there. That would be $100 per TB roughly to backup.

A little portable 2TB HDD from WD is $60
A 12TB raw HDD for DIY desktop or network storage is just over $200
12TB of M-disc would be $1200

Analog formats like tape or vinyl. Any bit of damage is just that spot. The rest is still good. I can deal with that. Any copy is generational. OK, that stinks! No perfect copies. Every piece of gear connected counts! The lowest performing bit sets the quality for the system. A lot to keep track of!

Digital formats put the hard parts (AD and DA conversions) at the beginning and end of the chain. It's just shuttling ones and zeros in between. Copies are perfect clones. Theoretically perfect signal handling in the digital domain with no generational concerns. That's all happiness and light! Get some little bit of damage on a disc or to a hard drive and sometimes you can't even read back any of the file now. OK, this part is more risk than some people would be able to handle! Did you make your backups? Did you know you needed to?

That's why I want to see the ability to image the surface of these storage items and read data back that way. And then just like a vinyl album with a single point of damage, you would be able to read around any damaged area just the same.

 

[mandrix]

I not only have digital clones, but backup's of those on a different pc, as well as an off site back up with 99% of it with a friend.
Any way that's how I roll. lol.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Just saw this thread.

I guess I should know that attempted humor and sarcasm don't translate well online. But here we are.

I think the M-discs were around $20 each when first introduced. So you know, too expensive kind of like the absurd cost of 2" tape for 24 track machines. Anyway, I posted this reply in the other thread:

Looks like either 25GB BDR M-disc for just over $2.50 ea or 100GB BDXL M-disc for just over $10 ea. Same price byte for byte there. That would be $100 per TB roughly to backup.

A little portable 2TB HDD from WD is $60
A 12TB raw HDD for DIY desktop or network storage is just over $200
12TB of M-disc would be $1200

Analog formats like tape or vinyl. Any bit of damage is just that spot. The rest is still good. I can deal with that. Any copy is generational. OK, that stinks! No perfect copies. Every piece of gear connected counts! The lowest performing bit sets the quality for the system. A lot to keep track of!

Digital formats put the hard parts (AD and DA conversions) at the beginning and end of the chain. It's just shuttling ones and zeros in between. Copies are perfect clones. Theoretically perfect signal handling in the digital domain with no generational concerns. That's all happiness and light! Get some little bit of damage on a disc or to a hard drive and sometimes you can't even read back any of the file now. OK, this part is more risk than some people would be able to handle! Did you make your backups? Did you know you needed to?

That's why I want to see the ability to image the surface of these storage items and read data back that way. And then just like a vinyl album with a single point of damage, you would be able to read around any damaged area just the same.

Of course your correct: if cost per TB is the main criteria, good 'ol magnetic HDD will win every time. The ability to construct huge amounts of storage with whatever choice of RAID configuration is a frequent topic on the forum. In fact compared to discing (new word?) it prompted @Mr. Afternoon to say this elsewhere:

I do wanna ask how tedious it is to archive data on DVDs and Blu-rays if you have large amounts of data? Wouldn't properly managed hard disks be more efficient? For example, it would take at least 20 Blu-ray discs for ONE COPY of the family photos and videos I have for the past decade...

How tedious? Depends if you're copying folder's or selected files. The latter can be time consuming but if gives you a chance to organize into a disc that might be labeled XMAS 2014>2024. The problem with a huge lump of data is that it's huge to sort through on its own. And you've got to make it easy to use if sharing.

In regards to playability I realize that many younger people don't buy physical media & therefore don't have players. Where I worked all the much younger than me nurses did not even have a disc spinner. But they all had Playstation or X box that could be used. As a matter of fact, my older son in law purchased a 205 new, used it a few months & then never unpacked it when he moved two years ago. But he does have a Playstation, so that's what he uses if needed. I am convinced that even if physical media vanished tomorrow there would still be a way to play them for a good long time.

Most of the activities on the forum here is about ripping, converting, and storing almost exclusively music. Some of my favorite home upmixing projects involves video. I took The Wizard of Speed and Time from LD, a soundtrack that was barely stereo, And upmixed to 5.1. I added many foley audio FX and enhancement & in DVDLab Pro made a very nice DVD with full menus DTS 5.1 & AC-3 stereo. For this it needs to be burned to a disc, M-Disc or otherwise.

I have 14 DVD's of Chisato Moritaka that has very good image quality & 16/48 LPCM audio which is a decent start for upmixing. Again 5.1 DTS at full data rate with Stereo AC-3 for reference, menu & chapter marks. Again this would not work well played from a server. My Oppo will play back the VOB segments just fine, with choice of audio, but there is a2 sec gap between the VOB files and no menu.

Obviously with projects like this I want to preserve as much as possible. As I said else where I am selective about this... I don't burn everything on to M-Disc. Just the stuff most important to me. So they've been first recorded on standard discs and later M-Disc. And it's not that important if it really will last 1,000 years but hopefully a few generation's down the road. And really the point I'm taking long to get to is not if M-Disc is a cost effective way to store things but what value is it to archive this way? Every HDD has a MTBF and I've had two ext drives go bad so I see great value in the use of M-Disc.

 

[mandrix]

Economies of scale. That's where HDD's shine.
I once had HDD's die on two different machines within 1-2 weeks that had my entire Quad archive. It's taken me years to reattain most of it.

All methods have their plus and minuses. I still burn discs that are important to me for backup. But in my case it's all about me and my music, not for some future generation so super-longevity is not an issue.

My Daughter & Grand Daughter already have all the old photo's, which I scanned and digitized, and never did I own a movie camera.
My Grand Daughter is the last in my immediate family line, neither her or her Mother are interested in my music collection.

For myself burning discs is only as pertains to music, but sure, I can see wanting to categorize and save on a long-lasting disc format those treasured family photo's/movies, whatever. If I did want what is touted as a disc that has longevity beyond "standard" discs I would for sure choose M-Disc.

 

[jimfisheye]

If M-disc really delivers and really lasts, say even 100 years, I might just consider the cost matter of fact worth it. My initial reaction is just to question it first. Probably because there were more than a few different disc makers making very similar claims. Maybe not 1000 years but hundreds. And then just 3 years later the discs don't read anymore and the $0.25 Verbatims win another round.

That A) They're still around, B) No one's reading them the riot act, C) Actual positive comments, and D) Supported by generic optical drives now all sounds great!

There's sure no perfect answer, is there?
You have to manage a hard drive server or... poof! Gone!
You have to keep an eye on your optical storage and recycle and redo periodically... or yes, poof again!

I do some off site storage of 3rd backup copies with some friends too. No really! They're just keeping my backup copies safe for me. And vice verse.

I do feel sorry for the younger generations and the uneducated with all the streaming services and cloud services. Really great modern conveniences for sure! But keep your important music and stuff yourself! And backed up! Download/copy anything found online that is useful or interesting to you as though you think it will disappear tomorrow! Because sometimes it does! Assume that cloud based music collection will be deleted at any time with no recourse. They made you think you bought it but it was just a temporary rental unless you took action and saved and backed it up. Subscription services? Just flat out no. Never a reasonable idea.

 

[atrocity]

My Oppo will play back the VOB segments just fine, with choice of audio, but there is a2 sec gap between the VOB files and no menu.

MKV is my preferred streaming container for just that reason. It's exactly the same bits that are on the DVD/Blu-ray/4k (including multiple soundtracks and subtitles), just put into a different file format.

Still no menus, though with 1 video per hopefully well-named MKV file it hasn't been an issue for me.

 

[pat bateman]

Here's my TED Talk.

I’ve been in sales and marketing for too long to believe the grandiose claims of M Disc. Even if it was created with the best intentions to be better than a HTL disc in regards to archival shelf life. 1K years? What a convenient #. All the stress tests I’ve seen are pitted against LTH (organic dye) discs instead of HTL (inorganic dye). This would be like if Chevrolet used a base model Mustang GT as a benchmark to a Corvette Z06. If I ever see a third party stress test with M Disc vs a standard HTL disc - which is only what Verbatim makes now - (Z06 VS GT350 for the car analogy again) I could change my mind. But I have a feeling if the results were impressive enough, Verbatim would do this themselves, but I don’t think they would want to advertise the diminishing returns of M Disc.

My next thought I will admit is a little tinfoil hat-ish, but unless they have corporate or government customers, it makes little sense to me that M Discs would still be manufactured in this day and age without some outright BS going on, ie, just rebranding HTL discs. They're taking already basically dead storage medium for consumers, and investing in it? But in the interest of acknowledging the possible hypocrisy, the same could be said with multi-channel music, yet here we are in a boom cycle I don't think anyone saw coming.

 

[barfle]

Here's my TED Talk.

I’ve been in sales and marketing for too long to believe the grandiose claims of M Disc. Even if it was created with the best intentions to be better than a HTL disc in regards to archival shelf life. 1K years? What a convenient #. All the stress tests I’ve seen are pitted against LTH (organic dye) discs instead of HTL (inorganic dye). This would be like if Chevrolet used a base model Mustang GT as a benchmark to a Corvette Z06. If I ever see a third party stress test with M Disc vs a standard HTL disc - which is only what Verbatim makes now - (Z06 VS GT350 for the car analogy again) I could change my mind. But I have a feeling if the results were impressive enough, Verbatim would do this themselves, but I don’t think they would want to advertise the diminishing returns of M Disc.

My next thought I will admit is a little tinfoil hat-ish, but unless they have corporate or government customers, it makes little sense to me that M Discs would still be manufactured in this day and age without some outright BS going on, ie, just rebranding HTL discs. They're taking already basically dead storage medium for consumers, and investing in it? But in the interest of acknowledging the possible hypocrisy, the same could be said with multi-channel music, yet here we are in a boom cycle I don't think anyone saw coming.

I’ve found that the variety of available M-disc blanks has diminished, at least on Amazon, and I don’t see them for sale in any of the B&M stores around here, admittedly not a major metropolitan area. So maybe they’re not being made any more. Hard to know. And as I’ve noted, I don’t believe I have family who would give a rip about anything I have in the way of media, so a 1000-year lifespan just doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe some of of the other geezers here (and I’m a card-carrying memmber of that group) have grandkids who want the old bibles, souvenirs, memorabilia, trophies, and record collections of their ancestry, and that’s great when it happens. In that case, something that could be expected to last more than 20 years would have value.

 

[stoopid]

I’ve found that the variety of available M-disc blanks has diminished, at least on Amazon, and I don’t see them for sale in any of the B&M stores around here, admittedly not a major metropolitan area. So maybe they’re not being made any more. Hard to know. And as I’ve noted, I don’t believe I have family who would give a rip about anything I have in the way of media, so a 1000-year lifespan just doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe some of of the other geezers here (and I’m a card-carrying memmber of that group) have grandkids who want the old bibles, souvenirs, memorabilia, trophies, and record collections of their ancestry, and that’s great when it happens. In that case, something that could be expected to last more than 20 years would have value.

For most John and Jane Doe computer users this tech means nothing to them, they don't even have a copy of their vacation photos anywhere but the hard drive of their computer, if not just kept on their smartphone (and maybe sync'd to the cloud). The greater use of m-disc tech is for businesses and artists who need to preserve their digital data long term for copyright, regulatory, and other archival purposes.

 

[barfle]

For most John and Jane Doe computer users this tech means nothing to them, they don't even have a copy of their vacation photos anywhere but the hard drive of their computer, if not just kept on their smartphone (and maybe sync'd to the cloud). The greater use of m-disc tech is for businesses and artists who need to preserve their digital data long term for copyright, regulatory, and other archival purposes.

True enough. I recently digitized a bunch of negatives for my 50-year-old niece, and she doesn’t hace a disc reader to her name. I had to send her a thumb drive.

I’m out of touch with even one generation behind me, not to mention millenials.

 

[Bluedemon25]

Where can you buy authentic m discs currently? I saw a Reddit post saying that verbatim has now kept the label m disc but offering the crappy regular blu-rays rather astonishingly if this post is true.

 

[jimfisheye]

I think B&H Photo Video, Sweetwater, & Full Compass are still legit online stores. Don't go anywhere near Amazon or Worst Purchase for anything!

Yeah, why aren't Verbatim offering a version of the product if it's so game changing? Good question there. The format being supported by most/all optical drives though... That's a data point for taking it seriously or they wouldn't bother.

I see blank BDRs are up to $1 each all of a sudden! A 4x increase is no joke! So those M-discs are only 2.5x the cost to archive now.

The point about them comparing apples to oranges in the brochure and not mentioning inorganic dye products is reminiscent of the initial SACD claims that were made as though PCM was only 16/44.1 and 24 bit HD didn't exist. Another recent topic and a point often lost in the discussion.

Probably going to continue my mishmash of multiple copies on hard drive backups (scheduled nightly), old studio projects archived on Verbatim BDR (2 copies when I'm being serious), and offsite storage with friends. The cloud services are an enticing thought for a 3rd offsite copy but it would cost an arm and a couple legs for the amount of storage needed. I'm into terabytes at present. Even my "utility" hard drive of various app installers, OS installers, diagnostic stuff, manuals, instructions, and random tools is a terabyte of stuff now.

Carbon Copy Cloner was really useful and slick for years. It stinks losing this! (No more bootable cloned system drives after Monterey and forward.) CloneZilla (RescueZilla version) works really well. I need to set up a Linux server now if I want to automate that with scheduled backups. So... still running High Sierra on the studio machine.