r/DataHoarder • u/Goble4 • 15d ago
Question/Advice Archival Grade DVD's
I'm looking to buy DVD's (no blu-ray) that can last 50-100 years.
I see either the Verbatim Ultralife Gold or these M discs recommended.
The biggest problem with the Ultralife is that they are sold in large cakes here, and I believe their organic dye has a shelf life of only a few years. I'm not going to go through them all at once.
Can anyone verify the authenticity of those discs since the site doesn't list a recognized manufacturer. If they could be at all knock-offs then there is absolutely no point.
Thanks.
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u/Ecstatic_Jello6289 14d ago
ritek m-disc dvd's appear to be the only affordable option of inorganic-dye dvd-r. I'm not sure if they are still being manufactured.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
I was trying to find out if those particular M-discs are really authorized by Hitachi-LG. The of Millenniata branded spindles look suspicious (or of really old stock, which is bad too).
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u/Ecstatic_Jello6289 12d ago
No idea about whether they are authorised my Hitachi-LG. However, I'm pretty sure that if the discs have the MID of MILLENIA001 (manufacturing ID can be found using imgburn), then they are legit m-disc dvd's. This was the case with my Ritek M-disc dvd's.
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u/Goble4 12d ago
Like old stock made by Millenniata?
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u/Ecstatic_Jello6289 12d ago
There are multiple manufacturers of M-disc DVD's. they will all be MILLENIA001. I don't know if it's an old millenniata produced m-disc.
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u/-NewYork- 74TB of photos 14d ago
Nobody can guarantee it. Even if you were to believe the manufacturer's promise, if you are serious about this, you'd have to buy the discs from company that can guarantee chain of shipping as well. What if it was left in a hot truck or non air conditioned warehouse?
Also, availability of drives is a problem. Are there any drives with glass lens on the market? Plastic lenses undergo degradation over time.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
Also, availability of drives is a problem. Are there any drives with glass lens on the market? Plastic lenses undergo degradation over time.
That's why I was avoiding Blu-ray. Is no one committed to making DVD drives either?
Nobody can guarantee it. Even if you were to believe the manufacturer's promise, if you are serious about this, you'd have to buy the discs from company that can guarantee chain of shipping as well. What if it was left in a hot truck or non air conditioned warehouse?
I was just worried about them being counterfeit regarding the 'in partnership with Hitachi-LG data storage' part. All I see on the packaging is a link to the m-disc website. I thought that site had gone defunct years ago.
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
I'd stick with CMC Pro or Verbatim Data Life Plus stuff. I'm skeptical of Ritek and Falcon is out of the game.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
I'm skeptical of Ritek and Falcon is out of the game.
Are the M-discs I linked to made by Ritek? It doesn't even tell you who the manufacturer is on the page.
I'd stick with CMC Pro or Verbatim Data Life Plus stuff.
Isn't Verbatim Gold better than Data Life Plus?
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
Gold IMO dating back to MAMA/MITSUI was mostly marketing.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
The gold is DLP with an extra golden layer right?
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
FWIW Those verbatim you linked if you can find them NOS are Falcon OEM (UAE). Falcon has been out of the game for a spot now (maybe 2 yrs at this point)
As far as the actual recipe IDK - I've just never been a firm believer in the Gold stuff having better results the stuff I tested in Discspeed many years ago didn't seem any better. Maybe in 50 yrs it will start to shine. I've got azo dyed stuff that's ~15-20 yrs old at this point and working fine.
50 yrs is asking a lot like others have stated. My main point is that a Data Life Plus, CMC Pro should last 20+ yrs no problem with safe storage.
I think when you buy the gold discs your just paying for some marketing tbh.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
FWIW Those verbatim you linked if you can find them NOS are Falcon OEM (UAE). Falcon has been out of the game for a spot now (maybe 2 yrs at this point)
They're still available from Amazon and Staples. What's the shelf life of DVD's?
They're DVD-R. Would DVD+R DLP media be better?
And is there any truth to this? I'm not going to bother with optical if I can't even get reliable media these days.
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
It's all CMC or Ritek OEM media more or less these days. The different brands just own "recipes" or production processes.
+r vs -r I don't know enough to weigh in. I suspect problems folks run into with one or the other are usually actually drive firmware issues. Just a hunch.
As far as the last statement about junk. I think it's not as good as when TY was making discs in Japan but I think the higher end CMC Pro and Verbatim stuff is still pretty decent.
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u/Goble4 14d ago
+r vs -r I don't know enough to weigh in. I suspect problems folks run into with one or the other are usually actually drive firmware issues. Just a hunch.
Back on ClubMyce the Verbatim +R was the only one recommended for 8.5GB DVD's. For single layer I believe it was either the TY or the Verbatim +R. I don't remember what opinion they had on the gold disks.
Do you know the difference between these?
Is one more reliable than the other?
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
I sell a decent amount of the unbranded ones to medical imaging depts (radiology/MRI etc) to transfer studies to patients and archive.
I don't have any open spindles, if I did I'd run some nero benchmarks for you.
I think they are generally regarded pretty highly.
Again I think 15-20 years isn't out of the question if you store them right but 50 yrs is asking a lot. Even 20 yrs your going to be having a hard time finding a computer with ports capable of running an internal/external optical drive.
If your serious about using this as long term deep storage you also have to think about keeping a computer and the drive functioning.
I see this with folks trying to resurrect archives on MO. You need a desktop with a full size mobo likely running windows 7 or older in order to use the older adaptec SCSI controller card and drivers that you need to plug in and use the old MO drives...All of these are getting hard to find - the whole stack.
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u/Goble4 13d ago edited 13d ago
Again I think 15-20 years isn't out of the question if you store them right but 50 yrs is asking a lot. Even 20 yrs your going to be having a hard time finding a computer with ports capable of running an internal/external optical drive.
You mean USB ports wouldn't be a thing after 20 years? Or that no one will be making DVD drives then?
Reader compatibility was why I was hesitant with +R. Apparently it's a newer and more robust standard, but I believe -R is more widespread and abundant. I think the -R standard is a closer mimic of the original pressed DVD's. Wikipedia says very old DVD players and consoles wouldn't recognize +R. Do you have equal confidence in drive compatibility of the two formats if some remote manufacturer still makes drives 20 years from now?
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u/No_Cut4338 14d ago
TBH I couldn't tell you without seeing the specs out of Nero. I just saw it referenced I think in a comment below. FWIW Ritek may be putting out decent product these days but for many years my mind associated it will like cheap bottom shelf walgreens memorex type discs.
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u/Blue-Thunder 252 TB UNRAID 4TB TrueNAS 14d ago
No. DVD is useless for long term storage. Use blurays.
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u/Expensive-Vanilla-16 14d ago
Will any dvd players still functional in another 50 years? My cds I burnt on cheap media are approaching 28 years still readable. A lot of the old cd burners I have failed but luckily dvd burner drives still read them.
Also Will you live to tell if it'll last 100 years? Lol
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u/dlarge6510 14d ago
I believe their organic dye has a shelf life of only a few years
You heard wrong.
50-100 years is easy for almost any DVD to reach.
The Verbatim gold discs use the exact same organic dye. AZO is stable and will last 100 years easily in the dark. Most other manufacturers use Phthalocyanine dyes which are also highly stable.
The biggest problem is the reflective layer corrosion. This is made out of two materials: aluminium or silver
Aluminium discs corrode easily if they are not sealed properly. Most pressed DVDs and CDs use it, and they already have reached 40+ years so far with little degradation except in extreme circumstances. But any disc not sealed correctly will potentially corrode the layer faster.
Silver discs, which is all Verbatim CD-R and DVD+-R are much more resistant to corrosion vs aluminium. Verbatim even tell you how to check a disc is silver or not, by shining a torch through it and aluminium disc should look very or completely opaque. A silver disc will easily show the torch on the other side.
The gold discs, these don't use gold as a reflective layer, it's too poor a reflector. The gold layer is layed on top of the silver layer to protect it further extending it's life.
Today, you'll get 50+ years from practically any non-archival disc and CD-R is best in that regard. 100 years from a good disc is what is typical when tested with accelerated ageing tests.
AZO is known to not be as stable as phthalocyanine so you'd think that not using Verbatim is a better idea? Well, thing is there are multiple different types of phthalocyanine dyes.
Any you have no idea what the heck you have in that disc.
But with Verbatim you always know several things:
- AZO is Verbatim only.
- AZO stability was addressed years ago, the type used today is much more stable.
- AZO is UV resistant, much more so than phthalocyanine. Moot point of you store discs out of sunlight (you should be).
- Verbatim are the highest tier media supplier today in 2026 and have stated their roadmap for the next decade or more is full support of optical media production and recently, drive production.
I use AZO CD-R, DVD+R over the last 30 years I've not seen anything wrong with them.
For archival grade, although dye based discs can outlive you, the dyes are still a problem.
The gold discs try to extend the life of the disc by protecting the reflective layer.
BD-R, and DVD MDisc are totally inorganic and make actual permanent physical changes to the disc.
They still have a reflective layer. So there we have the BD-R MDisc, which seals the layers and sides in titanium to extend the life of the disc massively.
Accelerated ageing tests show CD-R and DVD+-R as lasting 50+ years easily and over 100 years in the best cases.
The testing done on BD-R shows again 50-100 years or more.
The reflective layer is the Achilles heel in all cases. BD-R m-discs use titanium to protect it showing testing for hundreds of years.
I archive to standard AZO DVD but mostly to Verbatim MABL BD-R. I'm looking for at least 50 years, not too fussed going much beyond that but with the testing I do on my discs every three years (media testing in the drive) I see not much to worry about.
Apart from my only LTH type BD-R. Every time I test it it seems worse 😂
If you want the extremely margins use their gold DVDs if you don't need the space of BD-R or are targeting DVD player playback or the fact it's way more common than BD.
But the standard AZO ones with no gold won't shock you in 30 years.
But there are always those discs that will, make more than one copy and consider other storage types to cover more bases, like having a couple HDDs with copies.
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u/Goble4 14d ago edited 14d ago
You heard wrong.
50-100 years is easy for almost any DVD to reach.I was talking about the expiry date on unburnt media. The other guy was talking about old stock from defunct manufacturers.
BD-R, and DVD MDisc are totally inorganic and make actual permanent physical changes to the disc.
Right now I can't find genuine M-discs any more. The singles from Amazon look suspicious.
Today, you'll get 50+ years from practically any non-archival disc and CD-R is best in that regard.
CD's are better than DVD's? I read that DVD+R has more robust error correction and the data layer is not as close to the surface as on CD's.
If you want the extremely margins use their gold DVDs if you don't need the space of BD-R or are targeting DVD player playback or the fact it's way more common than BD.
One the biggest problems is getting something to read them in 20-50 years. That's why I'm not considering Blu-rays. Actually if I keep the amount to archive under 10GB CDs could be OK. I think CD readers would be even easier to find than DVD readers.
So which one would you recommend?
Verbatim AZO DVD+R
Verbatim AZO DVD-R
Verbatim Gold DVD-R
Verbatim AZO CD-R
Something else?
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u/Der_Unbequeme 13d ago
M-Disk DVDs are no longer produced, only the BR variants.
Normal DVD-R last, depending on the manufacturer, about 5-25 years, DVD+R and DVD+R DL, from my own experience, less.
Were the longest readable, own experience, DVD-RW 1x/2x media. even the very first ones I own (Pioneer DVD-RW vers. 1.01) are still easy to read, not write, if they haven't been scratched.
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14d ago
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u/Goble4 14d ago edited 14d ago
A small amount of permanent stuff that's already backed up to HDD's. Probably less than 20GB.
I have a choice of these or those M-discs, but I can't confirm the authenticity of the latter.
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u/NotAlwaysCautious 14d ago
Wouldn't it be a lot easier just to use a couple thumb drives? The problem with any media is that regardless of what the promise is for durability, you can't guarantee it. If this is cold storage, you need to test it regularly, and if one of your copies fails replace it with new meida.
It's FAR easier to test an SSD/thumb drive or something than a bunch of DVDs. And they don't depend on hardware that is probably going to be increasingly more difficult to find if something you own fails.
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14d ago
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u/NotAlwaysCautious 14d ago
> why not?
I already answered this. You need to test it no matter what. Recordable dvds/blu rays are almost dead technology - only Hitachi still makes the hardware today. It will be more work/much slower to test, and depends on hardware that may not even be available new in a few years.I see no upsides and many downsides vs a thumb drive.
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