M-DISC, Write Once and Read Forever?

[Nice2BHi]

Has anyone experience of these discs? They promise a lot.

Everyone Fails Except Millenniata

According to an independent report performed by the U.S. Department of Defense at China Lake, California, the M-DISC was the only optical disc tested that did not suffer data failure. The discs from Mitsubishi, Verbatim, Taiyo Yuden, Delkin and MAM-A all failed. None of the data was recoverable after the exposure cycle.




http://millenniata.com/

[[_chef_]]

And you would believe in "reading forever"?

[CaptainVideo]

The question is even if this works as advertised...will you have a device that can read this disc in 10 years? Forget about 1,000!!

[hech54]

The question is even if this works as advertised...will you have a device that can read this disc in 10 years?

Once written, the M-DISC can be read or played on any quality DVD drive that supports the common DVD+R/RW format. Most DVD drives that were manufactured after 2005 and almost all Blu-ray or BD drives support this format.

http://millenniata.com/m-disc/

[mail2tom]

Looks interesting, though they can only be burned on drives with M-DISC compatibility. LG manufacturers the drive which run about $79 and roughly $30 for 10 disks.

[hech54]

Looks interesting, though they can only be burned on drives with M-DISC compatibility. LG manufacturers the drive which run about $79 and roughly $30 for 10 disks.

I've been using LG drives exclusively for as long as I can remember. The only problem is that all 3 still work perfectly and doubt I will need to replace them anytime soon. I don't burn as much as I used to.

[Moontrash]

i looked into those a ways back and asked myself a few questions

do i have data backups from 10 years ago from "regular" quality dvd discs that can still be read?

answer - yes

are there other formats that store data and be read past 10 years?

answer - yes

examples
tape backup (which will be around forever)
quality blank dvd's
quality blank Blu Ray's

will any of the stuff i back up onto these M-discs be that important 10 years and beyond?

answer - not likely ( i see data i've had for years and ask myself.."what did i keep that for?")

has anyone had these discs 10 years to prove at the bare minimum they'll last a prolonged period of time?

answer - no

I would save myself the money and just grab some BR blanks and store stuff like there's no tomorrow

CaptainVideo
The question is even if this works as advertised...will you have a device that can read this disc in 10 years? Forget about 1,000!!

I like this point the best

[lordsmurf]

According to an independent report performed by the U.S. Department of Defense at China Lake, California

Those tests are crap. Read them. Anybody that understands media quickly sees that the testers were incompetent dipshits. (Hint: Look at the "manufacturers" list, both discs and drives, and be prepared to laugh.) The fact that oxonol wasn't tested at all makes the entire experiment ridiculous and clueless.

The only people impressed by this name-drop are the ones who skim the headlines only.
I'm reminded of this: Anatomy of a conspiracy theory by CRACKED

MCC and TY media still fair better in unbiased testing.

Some unbiased tests of M-DISC fared about as well as a Princo DVD-R -- it failed past 3GB, and had high jitter. Of course, it was blamed on "manufacturing defects" -- which is just a brush-off in my opinion. Princo could have made the same claim.

If memory serves correctly, MAM-A used to have a similar bogus test that they touted, years and years ago. And not surprisingly, very similar results ensued -- bad burns, poor quality media, fake IDs, etc.

[Cornucopia]

Havent' read the tests yet (I will), but I already know that something's up. I have CD-Rs from ~1995 that still play/read ok. That's 17 years, dude! (and yes, they ARE containing things that I want to still have available 10-50 years from now). High quality media, stored in their containers, in controlled conditions, seem to be correctly following the original manufacturer's claim of ~25-50 years, so so far I'm not worried and have no plans to change my media or ways of doing things.

Now, if the ad's copy is correct about the technology employed, I think that it's nice to have an alternate form of burning technology (vs. dye or phase-change), regardless. More like to stamped discs. I'm inclined to take them at their word for it in this instance.

Scott

[[_chef_]]

Yep, thats what I also had in mind.
P?robably the "earlier quality" CD-Rs are lasting longer than best quality DVDs and BDs.

[lordsmurf]

Yep, thats what I also had in mind.
P?robably the "earlier quality" CD-Rs are lasting longer than best quality DVDs and BDs.

My oldest discs from 1995-1998 have been showing higher fail rates in recent years. It's always a construction issue -- the foil is tearing away from the dye layer.

The worst ones are discs stored in wallets. Granted, that's not a good idea for archival storage, but these are test bed discs. But even discs stored properly have shown pinpoint breaks in the foil, including bubbling. I've taken some photos, though it's not an easy task. Even stacking anti-glare filters on a quality macros lens on a quality pro SLR is still tough shooting. I don't have my own microscope rig.

[Steve(MS)]

Not exactly new news but Panasonic has the 50 and 100 year discs.
http://panasonic.net/avc/blu-ray_disc/biz_ideal_media.html

[TreeTops]

I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see what device would play those hundred year old discs a hundred years from now.

[DaredevilMouse]

I have a little hands-on experience with the M-discs. I'd have to say kudos for the concept, and eh for the execution. The discs seem cheaply made with very poor scratch resistance. I've seen a few that even have little globs of bonding around the recording side edge. The concept may be valid, but the factory that's currently producing them looks to be shipping out discs that will be falling apart long before their recording layer can be put to the test of time.

[lordsmurf]

Not exactly new news but Panasonic has the 50 and 100 year discs.
http://panasonic.net/avc/blu-ray_disc/biz_ideal_media.html

The bottom layer of BD-R is so thin that longevity beyond a DVD is unlikely.
To be blunt, the structure of Blu-ray sucks. The HD-DVD was far, far superior in this regard.
But structural quality lost out to space and some bribery nonsense.

[Cornucopia]

Well that does it for me. No good having a permanent recorded layer if the laser can't get to it through the scratches.

Scott

[Steve(MS)]

Oh, I agree, HD-DVD was the way to go, the sony bunch screwed up blu-ray and we (sort of) have to live with it.

[DaredevilMouse]

Well that does it for me. No good having a permanent recorded layer if the laser can't get to it through the scratches.

Scott

Same here. I won't be investing in more of them.

Its a shame that the fiscal reality of bringing a new product to market too often leads to a half-baked end result. These will likely be a very small flash-in-the-pan in the professional optical media market.

Any serious attempt at "archival" optical media has included a hard coat layer to protect all that archival wizardry inside and keep it readable in spite of accidental mishandling. Also goes a long way towards protecting the polycarbonate from aging and losing clarity.

[Disco Makberto]

Hi, folks! Please let me ask you a question. Leaving quality issues aside, Amazon, for instance, claims that an audio CD can be recorded onto an M-Disc....???....isn't an M-Disc actually a DVD? An audio CD recorded onto a DVD is not playable on standalone devices unless we do the "audio on DVD" trick (with an image-wise video counterpart). Maybe they are talking about "MP3 audio CD" on the M-Disc or something, but unless I am lagging behind in today's technology, I am missing what they are saying.

Carlos Albert
D-Mak

[Hoser Rob]

50-100 year storage is a joke.

The early laserdiscs are now unusable because there's nothing to read them with.

Even much of the computer data from the first Apollo moon landing is lost because there's nothing to read the paper tapes with.

[Bjs]

Send all laser disc's here ... players I have

Magnetic telemetry tapes were used ... not paper

Any disc will fail including the m-disc the only two issues that stand out are the quality of materials used and as they say on the site "subjected to the same level of testing" ... if the test was not concurrent then its void.

[jman98]

Hi, folks! Please let me ask you a question. Leaving quality issues aside, Amazon, for instance, claims that an audio CD can be recorded onto an M-Disc....???....isn't an M-Disc actually a DVD?

Please provide a link on Amazon so we can investigate this. The link in the first post only talks about M-Disc being a DVD disc, so you are correct that this is not valid for audio CD.

[Disco Makberto]

I think I got it now. It is the M-Disc duplicator that is supposed to be compatible with audio CD and not the M-Disc physical disc per se. Please excuse if I may have caused any confusion. Still, if you read this article:

http://gizmodo.com/5828634/new-stone+like-m+disc-can-be-dipped-in-liquid-nitrogen-and-...and-still-work ,

people there call the M-Disc "a stone-like CD" which definitely contributed to my earlier disorientation. Why call a DVD a CD? Paraphrasing the old saying: "A DVD is a DVD is a DVD". Why, then, confuse readers by calling it a CD? This reminds me of a friend I used to have back in the 90's when he told me: "Carlos, a DVD is the same as an LD, just smaller". What???

Carlos Albert
D-Mak

[lordsmurf]

Why read Gizmodo for video news?
I like Gizmodo, but their coverage of video and optical technology is garbage.
They just regurgitate the press releases.

[Vz47899]

I know this is an old thread but has anyone tried this yet? I would like to know the results.

[usually_quiet]

I know this is an old thread but has anyone tried this yet? I would like to know the results.

lordsmurf has tested them. If you want a faster answer, he spends most of his time at digitalfaq's forum .

The old thread warning exists because the moderators here prefer that members create new threads for their questions instead of posting them in long-dead threads.

[acheter]

LG manufacturers the drive which run about $79 and roughly $30 for 10 disks.

[KarMa]

I recently got the LG WH14NS40, which has M-DISC support for $50. But have not tried M-DISCs due to price compaired to standard discs which some have done well in longevity tests. Besides M-DISC there are HTL DISCS (which are not labeled as anything because they are the standard) and there are LTH DISCS (which are labeled LTH). HTL uses inorganic dyes and have shown to outperform LTH DISCS, in the tests I've looked at. The only reason why LTH was a thing is because they were usually much cheaper than HTL in the earlier days of Bluray, but now days prices are about the same so HTL is probably the way to go, apart from M-DISC which seem over priced IMO.

At the end of the day, we will never really know the longevity of any of these discs (including the "1000 year" M-DISC) until they begin to degrade enough to start corrupting sectors in the real world. Might happen a day after you burn it, might happen 10,000 years from now.

[orsetto]

M-DISC is basically the BluRay HTL inorganic tech in DVD guise. Unless you have a particular requirement that the archive be in DVD Video format, BD-HTL is probably more practical. And as others have said, 100 year durability means nothing if there's no drive still being made 100 years from now. Most of us are looking at a 30-year window during which we expect to migrate data to the next big storage paradigm, whatever that may be. In dvd format, Verbatim AZO works well enough for that window. I've got garbage store-brand CD-Rs that still play fine after 17 years, and dismal Memorex DVD-R DLs still playing fine after 10 years, so some random luck is involved. Using top-quality blanks, better-engineered burners, and accurate burning software certainly ups the odds of archival success. While the boring old wisdom of spreading your data risk between HDD, optical and cloud storage still beats putting all your eggs in one M-DISC basket.