×
all 26 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]vanillatangie 13 points14 points  (4 children)

Wonder how long M-discs will last, In a distant future I can envision reddit posts "Found my xx year old M-Disc"

[–]AshleyUncia 3 points4 points  (3 children)

I've been burning non-Mdisc BDXL discs since 2019 now for archival purposes. People want me to test the earliest discs periodically. Granted unlike the OP, mine are not dumped loose in a box, they're on a shelf, sheltered from light, with clearly printed labels and a printed file inventory included on each disc case.

[–]johnny121b 2 points3 points  (2 children)

I eventually abandoned disc labeling because the label caused readability issues by throwing off the balance of the discs. Most of the problem discs read correctly after I removed their labels. I never tested the effects of applying the label before burning the discs. At that point, I switched to printable discs or (gasp) using a Sharpie to label discs' contents.

[–]AshleyUncia 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I'm using printable discs and a Canon MX922 printer that prints directly to the disc. :D

I just do regular informational text labels, but I have tested that printer with some gloss photo printable discs and high color graphic art, mainly for a few Steam game back ups... And damn that almost looks retail.

[–]johnny121b 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same here. When my prissy Epson printer was working, its disc printing looked better than its paper prints. If you were creative and careful, it rivaled retail unless you flipped the disc over.

[–]SimonKepp 4 points5 points  (8 children)

Optical media are great for long-term cold storage.

[–]M275 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I still have my very first CD-R media - a Verbatim CD-R that is gold with blue dye. I purchased it when I purchased my external SCSI CD-R Pinnacle Micro drive in 1994. It came with Adaptec EZ CD Creator, and would only run on Windows 3.1. My HDD at the time was a 210MB and a CD held 650, so I copied the contents of the HDD to the CD-R and it is still readable. I can still launch RipTerm, DOOM, AmiPro, and read my high school home work from that disc!

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I copied my work archives from optical media to a NAS a few years ago, there were a good 50 or so CD's, 250 or so DVD'S and some bluray towards the end. The media spanned over 15 years. Mostly verbatim discs. I think there were 3-4 that had issues. Haven't found any corrupted files in the years since copying.

[–]likely_unique 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly my experience although not so diverse manufacturers/brands: the cheapest possible DVDs died, all else worked flawlessly but one (it had dust/minor scratches preventing reading a couple of photos before polishing)

[–]WingyPilot1TB = 0.909495TiB 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing. Good to know these results.

I do think optical media are reliable and pretty rugged if stored well, by that I mean in a hard case and in an environment if temperature and humidity is comfortable for you, your disc probably will be in good shape too.

That being said I'm still skeptical about data that has been written to a chemical dye (LTH) layer, but at least BD-R and M-Disc are composite allow (HTL) so much more durable. And also that users shouldn't just expect data on a single disc to survive without some form of parity or redundancy.

Point being, I wouldn't throw my important data on a single disc, throw it in a drawer and expect data to be intact in ten to fifteen years.

Either way optical media has little value these days considering the max discs to acquire reasonably are 100GB. I guess good enough for family photos but that's about it (and that's what I use them for).