MDisc Thoughts for longevity?

[joshcali]

When burnable DVDs first came out around 2000, I was the first to jump on board. Now I'm finding that even a bunch of my top quality verbatim burns are starting to be unplayable.


fast forward to today, and now I'm also a wedding photographer and I have clients who want their image storage to last a lifetime.



So how have people found M-Discs? I'm considering recommending to all my wedding clients that they receive an m-disc burn so their storage will last. I'm less concerned about the compatibility with all players than I am about the longevity.

thoughts?

[Vidd]

M-Discs may last longer or it may be marketing claims. Nobody knows for sure since M-Disc have not been in real world use long enough. There has been advanced aging testing done, but does that accurately mimic real world aging?

If your wedding clients want reliable long term DVD storage and are willing to pay extra you can investigate DVD duplication businesses that will make the wedding video into a pressed disc.

The wedding client can also be informed on how to make back up copies. The DVD can be ripped to hard drive or SSD. A 4 GB DVD can also be backed up easily to the cloud.

M-Disc may be better than a standard recordable disc, but it is still a single point of failure.

[Bjs]

Its all the same material and hype about being properly stored could last x years

M-discs can take a lot of abuse but make sure your current hardware is able to use them ... unless players are "m-disc" ready then you have to replace the hardware as well ... and tell your clients to do the same if you do intend on using m-disc media

It's all about how they are handled and stored ... do it right should see them last beyond the point where anyone cares ... 50+ years later

[Cornucopia]

You do NOT need to upgrade your hardware in order to read/play the discs, only to record/burn them (which means you might get by only purchasing one additional device).

Scott

[pippas]

If you are concerned about longevity, I would have thought that it would be best to keep copies of your authored discs as ISO files which are easier for remote cloud and/or duplicated storage.
That way, you will always be able to make a new disc , should you need one .. although, in the not too distant future I suspect optical disc players themselves will become a 'niche' market - rather like vinyl is for audio these days.
At least with non hardware specific copies of your original files you would be able to adapt to them to replay on whatever medium becomes mainstream in the future.

If you keep them just as DVD discs, you would be dependent on optical disc players still being available into the longer term, whereas the increasing rarity of earlier replay formats have shown that that can cause problems.
VHS players, audio cassette players - even DV tape camcorders - are all slowly becoming harder to find, for example.
It only seems to be vinyl audio where a second generation of equipment is actually being manufactured. I can't see that happening with optical disc players....

[lordsmurf]

Odds are you're having drive issues, not disc issues. Lots of modern drives are terrible at reading discs, and older drives are probably dying. Drives are the weak link in the DVD reading/burning chain. They have limited lifespans, and quality has deteriorated in the past 6-7 years.

As mentioned, in 50 years, discs may be around, but the drives will be harder to locate. We already have that issue with many tape formats.

You don't need real-world use (ie, years and years) to understand optical disc longevity. That's a myth.

The issue with M-Disc is that the initial burn isn't great. It is mostly hype, like gold DVDs (and gold was terrible as well; awful reflectivity).

Pressed discs do NOT have better longevity than burned discs. That's also a myth. In fact, through my 15+ years of media testing, it's the pressed discs that have the most issues, not the quality burns. This was pondered by VH members about 10 years ago, so I studied it closely. We were all correct. (I believe Indolikaa postulated it. He dabbled in police forensics.)

ISO files are actually worse for longevity, as it provides a single point of fail for the data. At least with many files, chances of recovery are higher. ISO is best as a hard drive copy/backup, and nothing more.

ISO files are not realistic for online backup; too large. Lots of issues there. Read the ToS of those services.

If she wants her images to last a lifetime, she needs to print them all. And make copies of the digital and print versions, and put it all over the place. Give them to relatives, friends, etc. Don't use inkjet junk, send out for silver halide prints (AdoramaPix is my favorite). Essentially, she needs to adopt a good backup policy.

[Cornucopia]

No myth about pressed discs: I've got some (a dozen or so) Audio CDs that are ~31 years old, and they still play fine. Only recently starting to develop ripping errors. So, claims of "50 years" might have been a tad optimistic, but not far off.
My oldest pressed CDROMs that I still have are less old (just because I didn't start collecting them until later), probably about 23 years, and my burned discs are dating from ~18 years, yet most of those have no problem also - because I used good media and stored/treated them right. Yet it is time for a bit of "data migration"...

Scott

[Bjs]

You do NOT need to upgrade your hardware in order to read/play the discs, only to record/burn them (which means you might get by only purchasing one additional device).

Scott

Not true ... we must question "what if's" at the clients end because even mdisc.com reports 80% of players built since 2011 "should be able to play" m-disc media.

A good player looked after can last many years ... my cheap centrix dvd player was pre 2011 and still runs well but wouldn't go near m-disc, just rejects them.

So there is the problem ... unless your certain then don't take it for granted.

[Cornucopia]

Your quote of 80% is in their FAQ under WRITING, not reading.

Since I wouldn't put any stock in readability (of ANY particular disc media) by a "centrix dvd player", your anecdotal example doesn't go very far to persuading me.

Considering the maker of M-Disc is expecting people to change over to their brand from others' with the express desire for long-lived compatibility, I would expect a lack of compatibility to the extent you are claiming would have meant they wouldn't sell past day #2!

Scott

[lordsmurf]

No myth about pressed discs: I've got some (a dozen or so) Audio CDs that are ~31 years old

Here's a strange fact for you.

Even though CD is far more fragile than DVD, with the exposed upper that is ruined as it is exposed to elements over time, pressed CD fairs better over time than pressed DVD. I think cheapening of materials over time is to blame. Most of my 80s pressed CDs are fine too, but it's the 90s CDs and especially 2000s DVDs that exhibit reading issues. The smaller data path of the presses is what makes DVD worse than CD.

Go figure.

FYI, this is one reason the "DVDs die in 2-5 years" myth got started, as they wrongly extrapolated -R/+R from the pressed longevity. But that's just not how it works. (There's actually zero research done in support of that myth. Just random half-ass guessing with minimal knowledge of optical media longevity. Some propagandist goon at IBM was the source of that nonsense.)

@Bjs: Centrix is not a known high-grade player. Those have a lot of documented quirks. Honestly, most DVD players have quirks, name brand or not. Many still have issues with DVD-R/+R/-RW/+RW/-RAM, and those formats are ancient now.