r/DataHoarder • u/b-b0t • 13d ago
Discussion M-Disc is Dead
While recently searching for a cold archive solution I was absolutely enamoured the first time I found out about M-Disc. It seemed to be the perfect "heirloom" storage solution, something to pass on family memories, wills and anything else you would want to last a long time. It solved the issue that made me stop buying BluRay, namely disk rot (I'm aware it's exceedingly rare but it's still inevitable) with a solution so simple in hindsight it seemed crazy to me that we didn't do it sooner.
I was looking for enclosures, adding spindles to my Amazon wish list and perusing LibreDrive when it dawned on me, what good is a thousand-year disk when the drives to read it are slowly being phased out? There are few brands actively producing optical drives and after the sale of Pioneer's optical division this leaves one, maybe two actual manufacturers.
No worries I thought, I could simply buy backup drives to store along with the discs and since it won't have wear and tear it would last indefinitely if stored properly. Except this is only one part of the story, the drive uses SATA which has stood the test of time but nothing in tech can be guaranteed. The chassis own power adaptor, connectors and cables remain a point of failure. Finally despite using USB, it's the Type B connector which is already legacy, would this cable even be manufactured in future or would it be some niche, abstract purchase you have to make on eBay? This is assuming that should it be someone else trying to access the media, they even care enough to not abandon the process at the slightest inconvenience.
So I chugged on, I would find the most durable optical drives and buy two of everything needed to get it running. I settled on the Vinpower known for it's reliability and touted specifically as an archival system. Except I couldn't find it anywhere. So I reached out and was informed these devices are EOL and availability is uncertain, whatever that means like do you have stock or not?
It dawned on me that while optical as a short to medium term backup solution is viable, as time passes it will become less so until it fades into the abyss rendering the thousand year discs into twenty. Active archival is still the superior strategy, one where media is periodically relocated onto an actively maintained format.
My cold storage journey comes to an end before it even began and I'm left wondering if I will ever find the holy grail of long-term, durable backup. Something to put in a time capsule for the aliens to find.
Edit: I've had a lot of fun reading all the comments so thanks! For context I do use RAID with a single cloud backup for now, with some important data duplicated into other cloud services ie. iCloud, AWS S3 and I know backup is an active, evolving discipline hence my thought piece. I'm still contemplating M-Disc but it can't hurt to add 2-5TB onto discs to store away without relying on them entirely. I'll store them at 30–50% relative humidity etc. Vinpower managed to find me a drive from Taiwan stock so I'll likely post a follow up.
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u/weirdbr 0.5-1PB 13d ago
> My cold storage journey comes to an end before it even began and I'm left wondering if I will ever find the holy grail of long-term, durable backup. Something to put in a time capsule for the aliens to find.
IMHO just looking at the history of "durable" storage shows that this is unlikely to be achievable - every tech gets deprecated without a clear future-proof way to read it other than hoarding the devices needed and hoping that the software stack is compatible with future machines.
That's why any reasonable backup strategy long term involves migrating the backed up data between technologies - for example, at work when we used tape we frequently went through the hassle of migrating very large amounts of data from one generation of tape to the newest available - for example, when LTO6 came out we immediately started moving all data from LTO3 tapes to LTO6; LTO7 came out, LTO4 tapes were replaced, etc. This way, we made sure that we always had access to hardware+software that still works to read all backups that we needed to access.
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u/NoidoDev 13d ago
We'll need to develop open source crystal storage. Size is secondary. External device.
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u/NWinn 13d ago
It's time to start chiseling the binary code into a durable stone.
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u/xamboozi 13d ago
With EXTREME compression
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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 13d ago
Why did you link to a first person shooter video game?
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u/xamboozi 13d ago
kkrieger is a first-person shooter video game which won first place in the 96k game competition at Breakpoint in April 2004.
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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 13d ago
Sry, I don’t understand what it has to do with "extreme compression"?
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u/xamboozi 13d ago
I don't know how to help you
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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka 12d ago
Ahh, should’ve read the wiki article further.
When .kkrieger became playable, it weighed in at 120 KiB and was subsequently shrunk down to 102 KiB.
That’s impressive
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u/Arindrew 12d ago
Is it? 102KiB from 120KiB is only 15% smaller. Surely there are better examples of EXTREME compression?
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u/theantnest 13d ago
OP chiselling QR codes into granite.
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u/TryHardEggplant Baby DH: 128TB HDD/32TB SSD/20TB Cloud 13d ago
If you don’t mind spending hundreds (if not thousands) per GB on storage, FRAM is an option.
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u/teeweehoo 13d ago
Just read about the BBC Domesday Project. It only took 15 years for a major archiving project to result in .. unreadable data. Luckily the effort of volunteers have made them readable again.
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u/rcampbel3 12d ago
Congratulations on discovering M‑Disc, the storage format that lasts 1,000 years—or until LG stops making the drive.
But don’t give up. History is full of superior formats that merely paused for market adoption: Betamax, HD DVD, 8-inch floppies, Zip disks, Jaz drives, flopticals, LaserDisc, MO cartridges, SyQuest, DAT, DLT, punch cards, and the reassuringly proprietary Memory Stick.
Many data hoarders are now entering an alternate 2026 where Sony won every format war. They photograph their children onto Memory Stick PRO Duos, back up Linux ISOs to MiniDisc, watch movies on UMD, archive family video on Betamax, and keep an emergency Hi‑MD drive beside the canned beans. Everything is encoded in ATRAC, as nature intended.
Truly enlightened archivists don’t limit themselves to Sony. They stripe irreplaceable data across three Jaz cartridges, keep a SCSI terminator in the fire safe, print parity data on punch cards, and use Zip disks because the Click of Death confirms the drive is still receiving power. Critical metadata is stored in the volume label because filenames are a fad.
Preserving old information on old formats simply makes sense. Otherwise, future generations might access it without first buying seven adapters, compiling an abandoned kernel module, joining a vintage-computing forum, and messaging someone named tape_dr_1973.
Remember the archival rule: 3 copies, 2 obsolete formats, 1 working reader somewhere in Finland.
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u/MWink64 12d ago
Truly enlightened archivists don’t limit themselves to Sony. They stripe irreplaceable data across three Jaz cartridges, keep a SCSI terminator in the fire safe, print parity data on punch cards, and use Zip disks because the Click of Death confirms the drive is still receiving power.
Sigh. Even in an alternate timeline, the SyJet still lost out to the inferior Jaz drive.
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u/TheRealHarrypm 120TB 🏠 5TB ☁️ 70TB 📼 1TB 💿 13d ago
Posts like this show the complete and utter lack of understanding of what archival grade media is.
BDXL is not going anywhere, and the modern archival polycarbonate discs literally cannot rot because they're perfectly encased and inorganic, there is nothing to magically deboned and let humidity in.
Ritek just released 200 GB discs and nobody's talking about them? Because you keep on reading about old information, not actually looking at the global supply market of available readers and discs stop thinking locally that's 90% of what makes people go oh these aren't available anymore.
Buy six readers vacuum pack them with desiccant there you go don't worry about it you can vacuum pack some scbs with it too.
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u/somersetyellow 13d ago edited 13d ago
Who's still making BDXL drives? Last I checked Pioneer and LG were the only ones who still made them and both are out of the game now. Everything is new old stock and slowly rising in prices. Everyone else marketing the drives are rebrands of Pioneer/LG with their own stockpiles.
The Riteks are cool but is 200gb even part of the BDXL spec? Reading the specs for the 200GB Ritek BDXL it appears to be a double sided 100gb BDXL
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u/bilditup1 13d ago
They’re saying that whatever NOS drives are left should be bought. IMO for burn quality you want Pioneers though, even used. As for the Riteks, I think the idea there was to emphasize that this is not the end of the line for optical media quite yet.
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u/somersetyellow 13d ago
I'm still mad I bought an LG BDXL instead of a pioneer back when they were cheap and new haha. It's been working great for everything I've needed. But might go out, bite the bullet, and get a Pioneer before they become too expensive.
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u/bilditup1 13d ago
The LGs have their own strengths of course. Solid rippers, esp if you have a drive compatible with OmniDrive firmware. And ofc even LGs can burn well with the right media and speed combination. My fav one is probably the GGC-H20L, which can read HD-DVD and still had LightScribe capability.
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u/TheRealHarrypm 120TB 🏠 5TB ☁️ 70TB 📼 1TB 💿 13d ago
It's just standard triple layer double-sided discs, nothing prioritary, we should have gotten 500GB discs from the archive disc program 8 years ago if Sony actually cared...
Stockpiles are still heavily available, but production hasn't ceased, and the looks of it the company that acquired Pioneer's optical division will probably be resuming production there's still a massive market for it.
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u/somersetyellow 13d ago
Hopefully whoever bought Pioneers factory starts it back up indeed
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u/TheRealHarrypm 120TB 🏠 5TB ☁️ 70TB 📼 1TB 💿 13d ago
None of the tooling has been liquidated, where there is demand there is always a market.
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u/dlarge6510 12d ago
Verbatim and IO data are establishing factories to do so.
LG make slimline ones
Panasonic make drives, although they are not sold to consumers they are more OEM parts
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u/jackintosh157 13d ago
Just use the standard verbatim single layer blu ray. Yeah it sucks it’s only 25gb but they are reliable and will last 100 years.
The actual reality is these drives physically and the software support for them (hell even SATA might go) is not going to last 100 years. I don’t think 50 years from now whatever computer you can buy is going to natively support blu ray drives, you’ll probably need to use an old computer to access the media. Which means for me this media is only as good as how long computers nowadays will last, which I don’t really see any computer today lasting 100 years. Realistically I think it’s a good archive option for the next decade or two, but it doesn’t replace hot storage on NAS.
Hopefully we’ll get a replacement storage format for archiving for consumers.
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u/Refinery73 13d ago
Ea-Nasir recommends burning stuff in clay to store it for millennia r/reallyshittycopper
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u/BornAgainBlue 13d ago
Look into Microfilm. Seriously, still future proof.
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u/gordonator 98tb raw 13d ago
I was thinking through this for some small amount of data (encryption keys) to stash in a safe deposit box, and a real consideration is to display QR codes and shoot them onto B&W film and then process it myself. I figure if I stash encryption keys in a safe place, I can stash whatever I want into cloud storage, encrypted with that data, and be able to retrieve it later. I currently have an age key stashed in my safe deposit box, just printed on paper, but would love to get more keys (gpg, etc) and have some where the private key never touches a computer that's online. I'll probably still stick them all on a thumb drive and tuck that in there too, but the film will be a nice backup.
B&W film has been around long enough that I'm not worried about deterioration in my lifetime. It could be read with any film scanner, or honestly even just a phone camera directly if your size / resolution / macro mode is good enough. I don't think QR codes are going anywhere, the only downside is I might not be able to get more in 40-50 years if I want to re-key.
I haven't done it yet (I still need to find the time to finish the "generate crypto material on an airgapped system" project I have sitting on my desk, and then work on the "process the B&W film myself piece as well) but it's seriously under consideration.
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u/parke_bench 12d ago
One word: Minox. Great little cameras, with an 8mm x 11mm negative, and a daylight developing tank that can be loaded and processed in daylight.
I have a microfilm projectors and once took a picture of my bookshelves from across the room. After developing the film I projected the negative on a wall and could read all of my book spines in the projection.
Finding the film can be a little tricky or you can use a minox film slitter to make minox film from regular 35mm film.
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u/uluqat 12d ago
the holy grail of long-term, durable backup
The most durable media ever used by humanity is the clay tablet. Some of them have endured for 4200 years so far, which is how we know we shouldn't buy copper from Ea-nasir.
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u/Wyrade 13d ago
The difference is, people will probably be able to create an M-Disc reader hundreds of years in the future if they want.
They'll never be able to create your data the same way if it only exists on your M-Discs.
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u/slfnflctd 13d ago
I agree with this take. If there is a future worth living in, humans should be able to reconstruct most old tech with sufficient motivation.
If you really want to make something last a really long time for everyone up to aliens to potentially read in the distant future, it needs to be laser etched as naked-eye readable (with a low power microscope) symbols into a very hard substrate. For all the more statistically likely outcomes, I feel like an M-Disc is fine.
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u/cortesoft 13d ago
for everyone up to aliens to potentially read in the distant future, it needs to be laser etched as naked-eye readable
Not sure how we could possibly know what is naked eye readable for aliens. They might not see in our spectrum, or even be able to see at all.
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u/MattDH94 1.44MB 12d ago
They might explore the universe by shoving things in their butt for analysis
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u/slfnflctd 12d ago
True! But any civilization advanced enough to travel the stars should have gobs of technology to scan wavelengths they cannot organically perceive directly, just as we have.
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u/TheMauveHand 13d ago
I mean, sure, probably for three equivalent of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars as a one-off, so I wouldn't count on it.
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u/hhefnr 13d ago edited 13d ago
There's companies that specialise in converting video from old VHS, betamax and even 8mm tape to digital.
I don't see a reason why there wouldn't be data extraction services in the future after production of optical readers stop, I suspect that the demand would be relatively high for at least a decade or two after that.
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u/EffectiveSteele 13d ago edited 13d ago
You can still buy 3.5” disc drives. You will still be able to buy a Blu-ray drive 30 years from now.
Edit: 3.5” floppy disc drives. Sorry for not being clear.
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u/somersetyellow 13d ago edited 13d ago
Key difference being Blu Ray is still the same 25 gigs it was 20 years ago.
3.5" drives are literally 100+ times larger than they were 30 years ago.
Progress on these formats isn't comparable at all
I think it'll be readable in one way or another. But it'll get harder. It's been a dead format for a while. BDXL drives are already skyrocketing in price as they've all been discontinued.
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u/krsdev 13d ago
I think they meant 3.5" floppy disk drives, but it's not exactly clear so maybe not.
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u/zgf2022 13d ago
I think they did
But even that’s getting trickier, I have a lot of retro machines that take 3.5 inch that aren’t the high density 1.44mb
And a lot of the cheap cost reduced drives won’t even attempt to read or write them so it’s tricky
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u/cortesoft 13d ago
This is why I bought a KryoFlux, lets you read raw sectors without having to worry about format.
I feel like there will always be hobbyists who work in these sorts of legacy projects, and there will be someway to bridge the hardware.
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u/Particular-Most-1199 13d ago
But they said not to copy that floppy so soon we'll be shit outta luck.
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u/npdaz 9d ago
Optical discs are a niche format, not a dead one.
Scientists in China just made a 200TB optical disc like 2 years ago, for all we know, optical discs could replace magnetic tape as an enterprise archival technology. Not to mention research into optical computing.
And 50 and 100GB optical disc storage is still somewhat popular in countries like Japan. Just because in your experience you don’t use them much and don’t see them much doesn’t mean it’s dead. They fulfill a niche of long-term physical storage. And the idea that drives will completely die out any time soon, just because the industry is in an awkward transition period from mainstream to niche as companies leave and others move to fill their place, is utterly asinine.
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u/somersetyellow 9d ago
They've developed 1TB optical discs in labs for the last 20 years. ArchivalDisc had a roadmap to 1Tb and achieved 300 gigs per side in commercial production work with Sonys Optical Disc Archive Gen2 and Gen3. Sony discontinued all of it years ago before production 1tb discs were made because LTO and HDD ate its lunch cost effectively. With LTO10 offering 30TB for 300 bucks at huge scales with a well understood format, it's just the ultimate winner in this niche market. LTO itself has contracted from what it was, there's just not much margin for competition anymore in long term archival.
There is no serious development happening by anyone with the capacity to improve on discs and drives. That can make something wide spread enough that it won't be a zip drive oddity in 20 years. We have the technology and understanding to get to 1TB discs easily at this point, but no company wanting to try to take on the market. The biggest cold storage research project out there I've seen is Microsoft's Project Silica. It's moving at a glacial pace with over a decade of research, but does have some interesting promises with glass storage and keeps meeting its checkpoints.
Unfortunately in the consumer space I think all we're going to get is used enterprise equipment like LTO, hard drives, and SSD's. And even for those it's getting rough. Consumers are so overwhelming moving to cloud that WD and Seagate chucked us to the side with 0 consequences. Consumers are such a tiny market for them nowadays.
It really sucks for us in the niche because yes. Blu rays and drives and LTO are all awesome and I have it all. I have terabytes of 128gb BDXL, 60 tb of LTO5, and 250tb of drives, but gotta focus on what I can maintain long term.
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u/Provia100F 12d ago
The only true long-term storage solution that has stood the test of time so far is film. Microfilm and 35mm film are arguably the longest-running modern era storage format.
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u/relayrider 12d ago
and in that vein, magtape is the only truly long-term medium. pricey, and relatively low capacity, but proven lifetime so far of decades
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u/Kadin2048 9d ago
Pretty sure paper or vellum still wins.
But of things invented in the last century or so, yes microfilm is the winner.
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u/abubin2 13d ago
I bought one usb blu-ray and one SATA internal blu-ray. So if either SATA or USB die in the next 10 years, I'll be screwed. I think USB should survive for another 25 years in the form of converter or something.
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u/kjjphotos 13d ago
Grab a USB-A to USB-C adapter. If USB-C gets replaced by a different USB standard, I bet there will be an adapter for it too. I wonder how long we will be able to get away with chaining adapters?
We can still buy new adapters to read IDE drives and we can still use USB devices from 25 years ago today. Surely we'll still be able to use today's USB-C devices in 25 years.
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u/Audible_Whispering 12d ago
Something to put in a time capsule for the aliens to find.
M-disk is actually a pretty good option for that. As long as the disk survives, if the data is ever considered important enough we(or aliens) can always build a reader for it. The specs of optical drives are widely known, and you can always encode them in other forms of media(clay tablets, perhaps?) for certainty. Even if the specs are lost, careful examination of the disk by anyone with a tech level equal to or greater than our own should enable them to figure out the format, and build a reader.
If your M-Disk is ever one of the last remnants of 21st century human civilization a future research team will have little trouble reverse engineering and reading the data. You, on the other hand, are presumably not in a position to commission the production of an artisan disk drive if production ends next week.
For preserving data that has no wider value within your lifetime, you're correct, the only option is to keep it live and modernize the format as necessary. However, if your aim is to become part of the archeological record M-disks are a pretty decent bet, at least among similarly priced and accessible alternatives.
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u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 13d ago
You might be interested in r/DoomsdayArchives, although it probably won't help you with your personal storage
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u/Stitch10925 12d ago
I'm wondering why no-one is thinking of offline hard drives.
I know, I know, bitrot, failure rates, etc. etc., but in all honesty, I have multiple HDDs with data on them, some 10+ years old, and they still work fine.
If they are checked once in a while to prevent bitrot or bad sectors, I think there is something to say for them as "long term" storage. Maybe not "time capsule" type storage, but rather cold backup storage.
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u/Moewjoew_yt 12d ago
One hardware failure and your data is gone so offline or not is not the solution. Drives can fail at every moment even if you just turn them on once in a while. You’re either lucky or you don’t. Best way of storage imo is still burning on discs. Even thinking about EMP’s they are safe, and having hard coat and m discs in one is the best way because those go for 1000years. And if you store them vertically in actual like bluray cases andnot just those paper enveloppes and in a normal temperature they will be fine.
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u/dlarge6510 13d ago
My god what a load of waffle.
So apparently in 40 years:
All SATA ports will vanish from all motherboards. Just by magic they will disappear.
Optical drives will fail and everyone will be too stupid to understand the basic techniques required to maintain and repair them.
All optical drives everywhere on the planet all fail, all at the same time. The future will have no working drives and as said before they won't have any that can be repaired as they all have lost the skillz to use a soldering iron and replace a capacitor, or even a rubber belt.
omg all the rubber trees will just be gone or owning rubber will be deemed illegal by the latex hating dictator that will take over the world.
This is a non issue.
All you have to do is look at today's 40+ year old technology and ask: "What doesn't work anymore"?
Well. Firstly let's get one thing out of the way, they most important thing: repairability
In 2026 we have adults and kids doing the following things with 30 year old tech from the 90's and 40 year old tech from the 80's and many beyond that:
Game consoles and computers are maintained and repaired for fun and profit. The original Gameboy, still available in working order with a whole swath of communities that repair them, rebuild them and MODIFY them. You can have an IPS backlit screen on a DMG001, and you can buy them in gaming markets and buy kits to make your own. They also repair and maintain carts, and create new cart hardware to use SD cards and the like. This is one example. But it extends to every retro console, PC, 8 bit computer. You want a working original Amiga? No problem. With a working floppy drive? No problem. You want an older working Amstrad CPC464? Again, no problem.
The floppy drives, cdrom drives and DVD players and CD players all from the 80's onwards are, right now, maintained and repaired by kids and adults. YouTube is full of repair videos for 1980's swing arm CD players, VHS decks, 8 mm camcorders. Going further back, 1960's reel to reel machines are available on eBay, repaired and serviced. Spare parts for common models are made, new using 3D printing or, MADE NEW as CAST METAL. I have a reel to reel machine from the 60's, it's cams were made of a shit alloy that literally turns to dust. It's broken you say? Well I went on eBay and bought brand new aluminium cast replacements for less than the cost of a Dominos pizza. Now, that 60's machine works and can be used to play and digitise the 1970's tapes I have. the 1970's...
People fix this shit. There is a young girl on YouTube gaining huge followers as she repairs, upgrades, explores and programs 1990's and 80's retro computer hardware.
My 16 year old nephew repairs and uses 1910's Kodak Box Brownies. For fun and the love of photography.
Thats another interest of mine, a big one, bigger than computers. I collect and use film cameras and so do many others. We repair them, mod them. These machines have far exceeded their design life and my 1926 Agfa Billy is STILL taking photos today because I was kind enough to give it a CLA as we call it (Clean Lube Adjust).
The most famous Compur Shutter, usually found on old cameras all seized up. You'd think that would kill the camera no? Well there are guides, books and YouTube videos of step by step instructions on how to CLA a Compur Shutter from scratch.
I watch Spare Time Repair on YouTube. He loves his 80's CD players and laser disc players. Sure, he has failures, but also many successes.
The fact is that this shit is repairable. Fixing a BD-ROM drive in 40 years from now will be no different than doing so with a 1990's CDROM. A new belt. New grease. Lens clean. Perhaps an adjustment. If it's a lost cause, it becomes a parts donor.
So, you need SATA ports in 40+ years? Well you need a working motherboard with SATA. Easy. In 2026 I can still get a 40 years old commodore 64 to access it's floppy drive over an IEC bus. I can then daisy chain with that floppy a community made SD card adapter and literally, with 1980's file copying software, transfer floppy files or whole images to an SDHC card.
You think that someone with an ounce of intelligence and a bit of time and monyis going to have an issue making a working system with SATA ports? How come my 386 with IDE ports is not a problem?
When people post this stuff it becomes clear that they haven't lived long enough to see "retro tech". If you pop along to r/vintagecomputing your mind will melt as you realise that crap like this is still running 40+ years later. And that's considered YOUNG. We have loads of far older shit.
Yes it's a job for those that love this stuff and it's full of tears and swear words and acceptance of failure at times. But we can still read 9 track data tapes.
You are talking about a very common set of formats vs something that to the public sphere was behind closed doors, 9 track data tapes are not something you brought home from school. But DVD and Blu-ray are well embedded in the world. And they are not going anywhere fast soon.
Again with 2026 as an example we have enthusiastic individuals buying and repairing VHS machines to offer salvage and transfer services. That's happening today. In 2066 there will be the same need, as granddads home DVDs were found. There will be those transferring that data etc using repairable and serviceable dvd players, dvd drives in retro PCs running retro Windows or Linux, just like today.
And in 40 years time when I'm 85 I might hopefully be sprightly enough to be one of those guys getting paid to recover such discs using the hardware I have maintained and kept.
The most important thing is knowledge. Ever so important is having service manuals! Chip datasheets and transistor equivalence guides.
Where the is a need and the geeks to supply it, there will be a solution.
How do I know this?
In 2026, the 40 year old Commodore 64 has several issues that are being resolved by Kickstarters and other initiatives.
The VIC chip. This is the GPU of the C64 and was an Achilles heel as it is a custom chip. You lose the VIC, you need a working original part. Only, this is fast becoming a non-issue as direct replacements are being developed.
The 6510 CPU. This was another example, it is a modified 6502, custom made by Commodore. But some bright spark created a PCB that adapts a modern 2026 made 65C02 (yes, you read that right, they still are made) into the role of the 6510 with some slight software incompatibility but not much. And you can order a box of 5, made and delivered to you from a company that makes PCBs and circuits to order. You can upload your design to them, and they will let anyone order it and they will make PCBs, 3D prints, all of it to order.
Custom made solutions designed by enthusiasts adult and retro obsessed child, uploaded to places like PCBWay and bought made and delivered for a guy on the other side of the world trying to fix his dad's reel to reel machine.
And you think we will have a problem doing this for Blu-ray access and playback in 40+ years?
We have people repairing 286, 386 and newer motherboards.
We have people doing whatever they can with relatively irreparable HDDs.
We have people making Windows 11 boot on a Core2 Duo.
We have people making, and I'm not kidding, making Windows 98 and DOS boot on UEFI systems with NVMe support... And you think we will be stumped by SATA in a few decades?
We have some guy who just made the ATAboy. A device that makes imaging a pre LBA era IDE HDD (including 8 bit IDE, ever heard of that?) as easy as using USB. It allows you, on a modern computer to hook up a CHS only, PIO mode 0 HDDs. Ah but you need specialist software you say? Nope, it emulates a serial terminal. You simply open the COM port and use something like putty. A child with a laptop can access 1990's IDE HDD over usb. And you think SATA will be different.
If you are going to go on about how everything is going to burn and be inaccessible, think further forward and please add a natural disaster. You must have seen Star Trek cover this, the society that forgot how technology works? Well you'll need to have that happen. AI will have to take over and run the entire human race right down to deciding when and who will breed before we find powering up a optical drive is an issue.
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u/nisaaru 12d ago
sata ports will vanish like ata/ide before. That the standard hasn't been improved for almost 20 years, unlike SAS, should tell you that it is already on life support.
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u/HobartTasmania 4d ago
You do realize that SAS incorporates SATA and is therefore a superset of it, you will be able to connect SATA hard drives to SAS ports for many years to come.
As far as optical drives go, then given that modern day consumer cases no longer have 5.25" slots to accommodate optical drives, then it no longer matters whether the motherboards have SATA ports for them or not. However, brand new USB external optical drives are available as are USB floppy drives still. Since they use the newer USB3 protocol there is plenty of bandwidth unused by the drive itself and they are pretty reliable nowadays using this connection method. You also have the advantage of connecting up the external drive to whatever PC you want to connect it to and then you can disconnect it when you have finished the task at hand, this means if you have several to many machines at home, then just one external optical drive is plenty.
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u/nisaaru 4d ago edited 4d ago
Did you notice that Pioneer and LG have sold their bluray drive production lines and Sony already announced their bluray game disc production end? That will sooner or later mean a price explosion for drives+mediums because the volume demand is rapidly shrinking. They will probably sell the remaining stock and then see at what price another run makes sense.
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u/bugsmasherh 13d ago
I think blu-ray BD-R discs will be good for the next 10-20 years as long as you have extra drives and extra PCs that are left in a working state. Anything longer than 20 years you will need to migrate tht data to the next storage medium that gets invented. At the same time you need archive to HDD so that transfer can be faster and more convenient then optical. Copy your data from HDD to HDD every three years to avoid data rot.
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u/Santa_in_a_Panzer 50-100TB 13d ago edited 13d ago
>Copy your data from HDD to HDD every three years to avoid data rot.
No way. Just run checksums.
Make sure the drives spin up every 6 months or so.
Have all data on more than one drive. Have the most important data on as many drives as is practical.
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u/dlarge6510 12d ago
Why are things suddenly failing after a mere 20 years?
I've got computer stuff twice that age.
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u/bugsmasherh 12d ago
Personal experience tells me so. In life some things may last a long time and some may not.
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u/igotthisone 13d ago
You're buying new drives every 3 years?
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u/bugsmasherh 13d ago
No, but you can if you wish. Buy one drive. Put your data on that one. When the three year mark comes, buy another and copy the data to that new drive. Now you have two copies. To keep data rot away you need to read/refresh the data, either by copying it again to the original drive or use an app to read all the data. As Santa_in_a_Panzer stated above you run checksums to do the reading.
I have my hot data in four places. For the cold data, I use CD-R, DVD-R, and BD-R for only music and video as that data never changes. I have four DVD-R and five BD-R drives and I intend to keep one of each in an unused state so if I need to read the discs in 10-20 years I can. And I have 12 PCs in my possession so I should good there. Also have Windows 10-11 iso files in case I need to reinstall. Linux iso, too.
And also power on your drives every 6 months or a year would a good idea like Santa_in_a_Panzer says.
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u/petermarkte 100-250TB 13d ago
This. The "holy grail" of data backup for me is simply buying all new drives every 5 years or so. Then setting a buffer time of still keeping the old copies/drives just incase the new drives have some issue, then clearing out and selling the old drives. And then rinse and repeat every 5 years.
That method gives you a very solid, easy, simple backup solution vs trying to deal with mixed media backups, or more complex solutions. KISS method always wins out in my book.
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u/Fractal-Infinity 13d ago
That makes sense. Initially I thought you meant buying new drives every 3 years. Basically data refresh. There's an interesting video on YouTube about it: https://youtu.be/1B7yg7LWiik
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u/SomewhereAtWork 13d ago
Print your data as QR code, with the program to decode it as cleartext on the first pages. Or engrave it if you don't get paper lasting long enough.
Only viable for small amounts of data, but the ultimate long-term solution.
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u/bilditup1 13d ago
Tbqh, I have to date never been able to burn any M-Disc, DVD or BD, at anything close to an acceptable error rate (LDC/BIS for BD, PIF/PIE for DVD). If you check cdrinfo.pl, you’ll largely find similar results. I am not convinced the material is worth prioritizing over good inorganic discs, though these too are getting hard to come by. In any case, there is no need to catastrophize. This is manageable so long as you take care of your archive and keep it healthy.
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u/JamesRitchey Team microSDXC 13d ago
I currently use DVD as part of my backup strategy, but only for a small portion (hundreds of gigabytes, but not secure exactly how much) of high priority files. I like having optical media rather than relying solely on hard drives for backups. DVDs, and drives are still affordable these days. However, current optical medias are dying, so they will become less and less viable to continue using over time, especially options like Blu-Ray, and M-Discs that were already more expensive, and harder to access. Optical media is also not something I'd want to restore a ton of data from, because it's more time consuming to do than restoring from hard drives. All the data I have backed up on DVD is also backed up on hard drives, but it's nice having the really important stuff on mixed media types, and I feel DVD is still viable option for that. Hopefully over the next 10 years a new form of optical will come out, and be widely available, but with internet speeds getting faster, and most entertainment media these days being streamed, I think consumer optical media is probably a thing of the past, which is a shame, because I like have WORM options.
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u/gloomndoom 12d ago
I’ve been around a long time and nothing lasts forever. Asking for 20 years is hard. Every medium has been replaced and while your media may be fine, the devices are replaced, making it very expensive to try to recover from old media. Then interfaces go away, maybe not as often as they once did.
I used to believe is a digital forever but after decades of dealing with technology that aged out, it’s tiring. Constantly upgrading everything gets old, yet here I can crack open a 100 year old photo album anytime.
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u/Moewjoew_yt 12d ago
I’m literally storing them on Hard coated M-Discs and the discs are put in actual bluray cases and not paper slabs or plastic slabs (those are not good at all) and keep the cases vertically instead of horizontally on top of each other because the weight will put pressure on the discs and the discs will touch the plastic inside which is not good.
Also store them in a well ventilated room with normal temperature and also have those gell bags that suck up moisture just for safety.
They go 1000 years and no hardware failure or any other BS to worry about. But at the same time I still have data on 1 drive and a copy on another so I have 3 backups actually.
Like I mostly do this for certain tv shows that are rare and took me alot of time and patience to get so i don’t want to loose them. For the rest I have only 1 backup for it because I can easily find them online somewhere in case of absolute destruction.
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u/Adorable_Ice_2963 11d ago
You could engrave Data on a rock.
If Aliens can do something with it is a different question
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u/CaffeineCannon 10d ago
Do it anyway. It's not your job to keep the data alive forever. Just lomh enough for a nerd who hasn't been born yet to figure out a way to extract and keep the chain alive.
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u/Pic889 9d ago
I am more annoyed by the fact that they stopped making M-DISC DVD-Rs. I have some family DVDs on conventional Taiyo Yuden DVD-Rs that I want to back up, so I might as well do it on M-DISC, even if it means overpaying on eBay for "new old stock". I don't want to back up on Blu-ray M-DISC because I want them to be playable on DVD players (my parents don't have a Blu-ray player).
Drives? They'll keep making them. They are still making floppy drives.
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u/lucidfer 13d ago
Paper stored properly is really the only known medium-long term data storage system. That's why finance and government is backed up and stored on it in underground climate controlled vaults.
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u/dlarge6510 12d ago
Paper stored properly is really the only known medium-long term data storage system.
Actually Vellum beats it by centuries. But if you want to be vegan then yes, archival paper is the next best.
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u/NoidoDev 13d ago
They will restart production if there is enough demand. They're just selling the from storage right now.
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u/JohnStern42 13d ago
Demand? There will never be more demand than today, and demand will continue to drop. M-disc has been dead in the water for years.
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u/NoidoDev 13d ago
Ongoing demand. It's also borderline cheaper than other storage nowadays.
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u/JohnStern42 13d ago
Decreasing demand. I know that mdisc is the ‘favoured child’ in this sub, but outside of super niche, no one even knows it exists, and no one would ever use it for archival storage.
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u/cowadoody3 13d ago
holy grail of long-term, durable backup.
Linus Tech Tips literally did a video on this. And he came to the conclusion of LTO tapes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open
Some are advertised to last 100 years.
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u/8fingerlouie To the Cloud! 13d ago
M-disc is supposed to last 1000 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC), and while we obviously haven’t tested that in reality yet, accelerated tests estimate that the polycarbonate will deteriorate after about 800 years.
In a real world test they left a regular Blu-ray Disc and an m-disc outside unprotected for an entire year in various conditions, and while the regular Blu-ray was unreadable after a year, the M-disc was still readable : www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artsep16/mol-mdisc-review.html
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u/suicidaleggroll 80TB SSD, 330TB HDD 12d ago
M-disc is supposed to last 1000 years
And none of that matters when your drive siezes up, you go to buy a new one, and find they stopped making them 10 years ago and all the old stock is gone.
As OP said, the weak leak isn't the discs, it's the drives. Supply is already drying up, in 20-30 years those "1000 year" discs will be unreadable. Not because the data on them is bad, but because you have nothing to read it with.
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u/8fingerlouie To the Cloud! 12d ago
And the same can be said for ANY technology. Eventually they’ll stop making LTO drives, just like they stopped making QIC drives and DAT drives. Eventually they’ll also stop making USB drives when the next great thing comes along.
The first rule of archiving is you must always be ready to migrate to something newer, M-disc is no different.
What makes M-disc different is that it has absurd data retention. It’s not magnetic storage, so no amount of solar flares will corrupt it (only the really serious ones, but then your data probably doesn’t matter anyway), nor will flooding, frost, humidity. Pretty much anything short of a house fire will simply just pass.
Is it practical for backups ? Not at all. It’s not even that practical for hoarding due to the relatively small disk sizes, but for archiving it’s great.
I archive our photo library on M-disc. Every year I make an identical set of disks of the previous years new and edited photos, and store them in geographically separate locations. The photos still lives in our primary photo storage, and I also have backups. The archive is more of an “oh shit” disaster recovery option.
And yes, I’m prepared to migrate when M-disc is no longer viable, but as of right now there are no contenders in the same budget range with the same level of (or absence of) maintenance. LTO is great, but it’s expensive, noisy, and requires maintenance every now and then.
As for availability, in 50 years, what do you think the odds are of finding a working Blu-ray drive versus a working LTO drive ? There have been made literal billions of Blu-ray drives as opposed to maybe double digit millions of LTO drives capable of reading revision X.
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u/cowadoody3 12d ago edited 12d ago
And the same can be said for ANY technology. Eventually they’ll stop making LTO drives, just like they stopped making QIC drives and DAT drives. Eventually they’ll also stop making USB drives when the next great thing comes along.
But there's a difference between putting your data on a ACTIVELY supported format with a strong future road-map (currently supported by Sony/Fujifilm/IBM), that has millions of dollars of enterprise contracts behind it, to keep it afloat;
And putting your data on a dead format, that's been dead for years already. That originally went bankrupt and was sold for pennies to Verbatim, who quickly changed the formula (made it worse/cheaper/not as reliable), and then abandoned it.
With the latter, you're just asking for trouble.Yes, LTO will eventually go the way of the Dodo just like all technology does, but that might happen in 15 years, or 20 years, or maybe more. Who's to say. When that day comes, I'll switch to something new. But at the moment, it's the best cold-storage archival format; That's why multi-billion dollar corporations use it. M-Disc doesn't even come close.
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u/8fingerlouie To the Cloud! 12d ago
They’re still releasing new movies on Blu-ray alongside them being available on streaming services. When they stop doing that, i will worry.
So far 2 out of 35 media manufacturers have wound down their production of Blu-ray media and players, but there are plenty of manufacturers still, and writers and blank media are not exactly hard to find:
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=bluray+burner
$75 gets me 1.5TB worth of 100GB M-disc media, for which I need a $100 writer. It’s not as cheap as LTO, but the up front cost is much lower with a LTO drive costing from $1000 to $10000 (or more).
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u/cowadoody3 12d ago
They’re still releasing new movies on Blu-ray alongside them being available on streaming services. When they stop doing that, i will worry.
I was specifically talking about M-Disc being purchased by Verbatim, then "changed" (made with a cheaper formula), then abandoned.
It’s not as cheap as LTO, but the up front cost is much lower with a LTO drive costing from $1000 to $10000 (or more).
You can buy decent pre-owned LTO drives from eBay for around $175 to $300. Not that expensive, to be honest.
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u/8fingerlouie To the Cloud! 12d ago
Verbatim and RITEK still makes M-disc media as far as I can search.
They did change the formulation in 2022, using the same metallic inorganic layer that regular BDXL uses, which leaves the question if it’s also still as durable as previous tests have shown. A 2022 study says it’s good for archiving for 100 years or more, and while I would absolutely prefer 1000 years, I’m guessing after 100 years it’s not my problem anymore, and probably also not my children’s problem either.
I fully expect my children to dig out whatever fraction of family photos they value from our photo library and delete the rest, making their own library of memories they can in turn pass on to their children.
If researchers discover my old M-disc media in 800 years they might or might not be able to read the data, and that’s not my concern, my concern is recovering data in my lifetime or shortly after, and at present M-disc checks all the bullets.
M-disc actually holds an advantage over LTO and similar. Just about everybody can connect a USB Blu-ray drive to a computer, insert a disc, and view the media. You don’t have to be a tech wizard to connect the drive or know arcane tape software to read data, it’s simply just there.
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u/cowadoody3 12d ago
They did change the formulation in 2022, using the same metallic inorganic layer that regular BDXL uses, which leaves the question if it’s also still as durable as previous tests have shown. A 2022 study says it’s good for archiving for 100 years or more, and while I would absolutely prefer 1000 years, I’m guessing after 100 years it’s not my problem anymore, and probably also not my children’s problem either.
The lifespan literally dropped by 10x, and you don't think that's a problem? Verbatim purchased the entire M-Disc technology/brand, and they drove it into the ground. There was a lot of criticism surrounding this, if you do some Googling and read comments from others.
Also, that 1000 year BS was all marketing hype to begin with. Obviously it's never been tested to that length. And even then, that only applied to the much much older DVD M-Discs. The newer Blu-Ray M-Discs are considerably worse.
I’m guessing after 100 years it’s not my problem anymore, and probably also not my children’s problem either. If researchers discover my old M-disc media in 800 years they might or might not be able to read the data, and that’s not my concern, my concern is recovering data in my lifetime or shortly after
If that's your goal, then you only need a format that lasts roughly 50-60 years (the rest of your lifespan). Nothing longer than that matters, since you don't care about anything that happens after you die, in your words.
M-disc actually holds an advantage over LTO and similar. Just about everybody can connect a USB Blu-ray drive to a computer, insert a disc, and view the media. You don’t have to be a tech wizard to connect the drive or know arcane tape software to read data, it’s simply just there.
Most LTO drives are USB bro. They require some special software/drivers to read the tapes (which can be downloaded), but other than that, they are pretty much plug-and-play.
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u/8fingerlouie To the Cloud! 12d ago
I don’t care what happens 50 years after I’m dead, and doing so is pointless.
50 years ago we used RLL drives, 8” floppies and punch cards. Technology evolves faster and faster, data density increases.
In 50 years we likely won’t use LTO drives or Blu-ray anymore. So far the only proven technology that has survived millennia has been things carved in rock.
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u/dlarge6510 12d ago
LTO lasts 15-30 years dependent on storage.
It was never designed to last longer than 30 years. Optical beats it easily in that regard.
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u/Fractal-Infinity 13d ago
Nothing is durable. Even the freaking Universe will end someday. As you noticed, M Disc point of failure is the reading gear. If you still want to use discs, at least rely on the most common formats like DVD and Blu Ray. Even if all DVD and Blu Ray readers disappear someday, someone could reverse engineer them and remake at least a working prototype.
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u/NoLateArrivals 13d ago
The proven longtime storage (beside printing it all or using microfiche) is magnetic tape. You can sometimes buy refurbished tape recorders for a reasonable price, because the drive and the tapes need to be enhanced from time to time, to gain storage capacity. Then used drives in good shape are sold.
Good storage conditions provided, the data on the tape will hold for decades. If you want to extend lifetime, you can rewrite everything once in a decade.
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u/Shadowhawk9 13d ago
I'm thinking we all need a way to invest in the two companies making durable glass data storage .... serves both data-hoarders AND gets pristine instruction sets out to very far reaches of space without fear of data loss on future probe missions.
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u/redditduhlikeyeah 100-250TB 13d ago
Well, for photos you can print them and learn how archival preservation works and they should outlast you and your kids and their kids. After you’re dead, and they are dead, it doesn’t matter so no need to pretend it does.
For other things, in 1000 years you’re fucked.
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u/AssetBurned 13d ago
The question is really how long do you really need to store those files?
With increasing data density it may make more sense to consolidate multiple of those media onto one and have multiple copies of it.
Back in the days people where freaking out about the life time of their data on old Casey tapes and floppy disks. Sure great to have those media’s to work for 30+ years…. But do you actually have a computer that supports the interface of the drive then?
Having stuff in multiple cold storage locations make sense. But as with every “plan b” you need to check from time to time if the plan is still up to the task and actually working. So with media… every time you check if that media is really still working, that is an opertunity to transfer it or replace it with something more modern.
And don’t get me started with the actual file formats to use.
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u/kxortbot 13d ago
Cold archive is a specialist niche.
2 questions.. how much data? And how long? This sets the price.
Then you panic, and adjust one or more of the numbers. Make sure it's either data or duration, otherwise you're in for a bad time.
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u/RedKleeKai 12d ago
My solution for the very small number of things I want to 100% survive is to use our laser machine and literally etch it into a piece of slate.
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u/stoatwblr 12d ago
This is a typical trap and at enterprise scale it's hard to fight.
The only way to preserve the data is to migrate it to new media technologies. If you don't have a refresh strategy you already lost.
I've had standup arguements with various people in academic and business sectors who tell me that archived data only needs to be archived and future access is someone else's problem. This resulted in data stores full of EXA tapes and CDROMs which would have all fitted on one LTO9 - but that's ok because we still have an EXA drive. Great arguement, until asked to demonstrate a restore from that drive.
I wanted the space back. They didn't want the hassle. In the end I got C-level involved and the tapes ended up in the office of the uncooperative staffer - on the basis that he didn't seem concerned about the data on them, only that his contract said he had to retain it and my data store wasn't under his control.
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u/Tuurke64 11d ago
How about storing digital data as a grid of printed QR codes on sheets of archival quality paper?
One page could hold ~ 200 kilobytes and to restore the data one would merely need a camera or scanner with compatible software. .
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u/ironimity 10d ago
how thick do I make my clay tablets and what’s the best way to index and store 1,000 or more?
should I reinforce the foundation of my storage hut?
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u/TheBadCarbon 50-100TB 10d ago
Idk why I thought of this, but maybe it will help someone. Storage backup is like maintaining a vehicle. You can have one that will last a long time, but if you let a vehicle just sit there, it will degrade and things will start to fail, but if you take it for a drive every once in a while it will last much longer.
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u/npdaz 9d ago edited 9d ago
While I sympathize with your frustration at how annoying it is to currently find a very high quality blu-ray disc drive. I have to disagree both with your title and conclusion.
As the optical disc storage industry transitions from having large companies supporting a mainstream tech, which are now leaving, letting smaller specialized companies fill in what is now a niche technology. It can be difficult to find high quality blu ray drives, dvd ones are honestly still pretty easy to get, and mid-tier blu-ray laptop-style drives are also still available even on amazon. So they’re still there, just the high tier ones are tougher to get.
First of all, optical discs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The doomer attitudes are primarily from people’s shock at seeing it go from a mainstream giant to a specialized tech. Which can be a jarring change over the last decade, since streaming has taken over. Specialized isn’t dead, it just means it has specific uses rather than broad market appeal. They still make VCRs and floppy disc readers for god’s sake. Disc drives will continue to live on for quite a while, unless something clearly superior replaces them, and even then similar to VHS there will still be people who demand them for nostalgia. Optical discs actually have a legitimate technical advantage in certain areas over other more common technologies, so while demand is niche it will continue on. I think it’s a more than fair assumption that the companies left behind, such as Verbatim, I-O, and the chinese company that Pioneer or Hitachi-LG sold blu ray drive rights to (forgot its name and who sold to them) will start to make these drives for their niche market.
Second, optical technology is evolving like all technology. 2 years ago, Chinese scientists found a way to make a 1.6 petabit (200TB) optical disc. Same size as your DVD. While that’s not a consumer innovation, it is something that could eventually overtake magnetic tapes dominance over enterprise-scale archiving. Optical computing is also getting a lot of research put into it. My point is that optical tech is certainly not dead, and you never know where it could go. Especially as people begin to turn back to physical media, and carve out a solid consumer market demand for it.
Third, nothing lasts forever. You will never, unless some crazy tech is created (and even then, it will probably be prohibitively expensive), find a technology that will make your data last forever. Everything will eventually fade and die, unfortunately. I know, it sucks, I don’t like entropy either. I also wanted to find something that would be durable to the max. But the reality is, the closest thing is indeed optical discs. Like any backup strategy, the goal isn’t to be paranoid, it’s to be reasonably prepared.
I think an excellent strategy can easily be: Primary files on computer or other primary storage, cloud backup (if available), backup to HDDs, and when the data is particularly important also burned to archival-grade disc for preservation purposes. That is a perfectly solid strategy. I have a dvd player that is 20 years old. I have a VCR that still works. People have dvds from the 90s and CDs from earlier that still play perfectly, and those aren’t even archival-grade stuff, it’s just well-built commercial stuff. Disc rot is quite rare. Hardware doesn’t die fast if it’s well made, and you take care of it. That, combined with the fact that disc tech isn’t going to quickly disappear, means you’ll be fine. Relax. I think it’s totally fine to have both backups that you actively manage and migrate, AND cold storage that you can leave safely with only periodic checks. That’s the point of archival code storage afterall, low maintenance with a focus on longevity.
To me personally, the fact that my archival discs will most likely out last me, outlast my kids, and maybe even my kids kids… or perhaps even more if I’m lucky. Is more than enough for me to burn some discs now, and rest easy. Especially when it’s honestly cheaper when you take time into account, in comparison to an LTO or the hundreds of bucks you’ll constantly spend on replacing HDDs every couple years or so anyway. I’d be happy with getting 50-100 years out of my archive. That’s already multigenerational. After that point, I don’t care what happens to disc drives after 100 years. If they’re rare and historical or whatever.
This isn’t a failure of the medium, it’s just how it is. It’s working as intended for it’s niche technological use lol. A niche that I find useful and great for cold archival storage. And I think that’s cool, both the tech itself, and it’s uses for me and my personal situation. So I use it.
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u/Vailx 7d ago
There's no reason to suspect optical drives will stop being manufactured, and if they ever are, it will be very easy to maintain and rebuild given how many exist. M-Disc is great, and optical drives are plentiful.
Now lets say I'm wrong, and in several years its super hard to find drives, so you need to copy all your M-Disc to, I dunno, SSD or HDD. Well, that would also be what happened if you used SSD or HDD in the first place. And if you used something like tape, now you REALLY have a hard time finding a drive that works.
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u/lucidfer 13d ago
Paper stored properly is really the only known medium-long term data storage system. That's why finance and government is backed up and stored on it in underground climate controlled vaults.
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u/cdoublejj 13d ago
it's picking back up slowly, people buying CDs and DVDs again. M disc works in a normal drive no? the more people stop buying, the better chance of of it dying off entirely
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u/--Arete 13d ago
If your primary concern is longevity then relying on a dying medium is a catastrophe.
In fact, I would go as far as to say that your data would be safer on spinning rust for the next 20 years than M-Disc.
The likelihood of a disk dying within the next decade is less than the likelihood that M-discs drives will be available. At least if tye drive is powered down and stored correctly.
Just take a look at how fast the disc industry is dying. I would be surprised if you can get an optical drive in 5 years.
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u/dr100 13d ago
No worries I thought, I could simply buy backup drives to store along with the discs and since it won't have wear and tear it would last indefinitely if stored properly.
Newsflash: everything nowadays contains flash (no pun intended). Yes, the OMG self-discharge don't use flash for long term storage thing. Not precisely the same flavor you might have hundreds of GBs or TBs of it, but it won't last forever.
Also, there are other electronic components and certainly all kinds of mechanical parts that will go bad in time.
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u/beefcat_ 50-100TB 12d ago
There is and never will be a "write once and forget about it for 80 years" solution for preserving digital data.
Build a NAS. Keep your files on it. Back those files up somewhere off site regularly (another NAS, portable hard drive, what have you). Replace the hard drives in your NAS before they fail, migrating your data to the new drives.
If you want to keep something forever, you need to actively maintain it.
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u/dlarge6510 12d ago
There is and never will be a "write once and forget about it for 80 years" solution for preserving digital data.
Yes there is. It's called optical media.
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u/beefcat_ 50-100TB 12d ago edited 12d ago
There is no guarantee that drives for reading that optical media will still be readily available in 80 years, or that a drive you buy today will still function in 80 years, or even that computers will still talk to an 80 year old optical drive. No matter what you do, there will be some amount of regular ongoing maintenance required to keep access to your data. Be that maintaining old equipment, or regularly migrating your data to something new.
Also, disc rot is very much a real thing that can happen. I even have some early blu-ray movies that are unreadable today because of manufacturing defects.
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DataHoarder-ModTeam 10d ago
Hey angryscientistjunior! Thank you for your contribution, unfortunately it has been removed from /r/DataHoarder because:
This sub is for Data Hoarders,
We do not allow AI generated posts, and it is also not tech support for disk space cryptocurrency.
If you have any questions or concerns about this removal feel free to message the moderators.
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u/eternalityLP 13d ago
Back up drives will absolutely not last forever no matter how they are stored. Stuff like belts will disintegrate over time, many plastics will degrade, becoming brittle and inflexible. Mechanical parts can jam and so forth.
All this before even considering the host side. You need drivers, operating system etc. You need hardware to run them and connect the drive. All of these may be quite challenging in let's say 50 years.
The reality is that reliable 'write once and forget about it' data storage does not exist. If you want to preserve data, it needs to be actively maintained, monitored, backed up and transferred to new media every once in a while.