Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
The discs sold as M-Discs now are actually just MABL BD-R's. They used to have a 'stone' data layer. Now they use a titanium metal data layer. MABL discs were always designed to last for about 100 years, and are orders of magnitude cheaper.
100 years is long enough, and 1000 years was always a wild-ass theoretical abstraction. The point is that you'll be dead before your disc is. If the next generation cares and drives are still available they can copy it to a new source.
These same discs are sold with a "Guarantee" as archival discs that are tested with heat/stress to last that 100 years, but any MABL disc really should,and they're much cheaper if you just get regular MABL discs. I think Pioneer is one of the big brands making the archival discs, or at least branding them. I last had to import mine from Japan. If you check the disc ID though, you'll see that archival discs are literally the same disc you can by cheaper without that label.
Some M-Discs still have a proprietary disc label, but my understanding is that even those just come off the same lines.
With 100 years you need every other generation to rewrite/refresh them, or the data is lost.
For things recorded today, nobody will care about refreshing for 75 heads, and if during 2100-2125 there are some budget constraints/wars/whatnot, the data will rot.
With 1000 years, you can just throw stuff into a bunker and all that it will take will be for someone in a period of 2800-3025 to take the time to refresh the library. 200 years should be enough to wait through a mild civ collapse or something.
Sure we’re talking about times beyond our lifetimes, but a lot if things we are sorrounded by were planned by people who knew they wouldn’t live to see the outcomes.
Note that almost all tests and marketing claims about M-DISC (most notably the 1000-year claim) where about the DVD versions. The main distinguishing characteristic of DVD M-DISC is that they do not use organic dyes like standard DVD+/-R, which can degrade relatively quickly. This is also why M-DISC DVD is not always compatible with any DVD reader/writer.
Verbatim / Millenniata loves to conflate claims about the original DVD M-DISC and the later BD-R M-DISC. But unlike DVD-R, standard BD-R already don't use organic dyes (with the exception of some low grade "LTH" discs). AFAIK there has never been good evidence that the BD-R M-DISCs have any special sauce compared to any other non-M-DISC BD-R. (Strengthened by the fact that there have never been compatibility issues or special equipment requirements to read/write M-DISC BD-R.)
In a 1000 years even if they don’t have the drives, as long as they still know roughly how it works maybe they will photograph it with a microscope and read the tracks in the M-Disc from that. Then they will have to decode it also of course.
Maybe. The question is why are we needing to read these disks in a thousand years. I would guess right now that the most likely case is information we care about is archived on modern formats such as hard drives, which are constantly being copied to different drives as the old ones go out and so in a thousand years they'll still have all the data in a much more accessible format than a very obsolete disk.
If, instead, we are talking about some human disaster and, that constant copies is lost at some point, we're kind of stuck. I don't think the technology to read those disks will exist either, even though in theory, yes, that could be done. It would be a massive reverse engineering effort and I don't think they will even know to start doing that with these weird disks that the agents had.
If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked, although we sometimes can't read the letters but at least seeing something with the eyes says there's something and if there's enough of them we have decoded language.
The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long. Paper has only been stored successfully in Egypt for that long. I'm sure there are other deserts though that would count just as well.
Not sure what kind of present-day data the historians of the future would be interested in.
> If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked […] The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long.
Well, paper would best be stored in a fairly dry place, so deserts may be a starting point.
Generally the only institutions / organizations that have managed to survive for centuries / millennia have been monasteries. Temples/churches have often been close to communities for public worship, but most religious traditions seem to have groups of individuals that were a bit more 'removed' from society at large. Organizing around such things could be attempted (a plot point in Stephenson's Anathem.)
Generally burying stuff and leaving clues so that an 'advanced enough' society can unbury it at some point may be another idea.
Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time. Masked ROMs and M-Discs are those two things which can really last a very long time; Floppies, Hard Disks, Solid State Storage and present day ROMs all require periodic costs, efforts and refreshes to keep them going (that means they can't be kept in storage and then re-opened in 30 years).
We also need a mechanism that outlasts that archival lifespan so how to read Discs or Masked ROMs and how to interpret them, also needs to be stored as well. Repairing electronics is a valuable skill that needs to be passed on across generations as well.
Keeping humans around seems to be the best bet, given how things are going, I wouldn't count on the present set of beings around to preserve any of this information that well either.
> Issue with storage is you need shelf stability without ongoing electrical/mechanical work refreshing data time to time.
For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. Any tiny fraction of a fraction that is important will have been copied thousands, millions, or billions of times into various formats.
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
I think 1,000 years maybe doesn't matter that much. However, these predictions are imperfect. If they're aiming for 1,000 years, that makes me more confident the disc will be readable in 100 years, which may matter more.
I have a few of these drives. They also rip discs very accurately. Bit-identical to my Plextor, at a fraction of the price. But sadly no ripping software offers these the verification logging that is required for redump approval.
I wonder why every types of discs seem to be entering a de facto deprecated state over the last ~10 years, especially inorganic types are. Is it simply because everyone's on Netflix? Or could it be environmental/material cost issues?
I believe these discs are made by transferring materials by vaporizing them in a series of big vacuum chambers, maybe those materials are toxic and/or China dominated and nobody wants to deal with them anymore?
It is said that cellulose film can achieve a 1000-year life expectancy if stored in specialized cold and dry storage environments. Oh and its a fire/explosion hazard
On March 18, 2019, it was revealed that Myspace had lost all of its user content from launch until 2015 in a botched server migration with no backup. Over 50 million songs and 12 years' worth of content were permanently lost.[102] In April 2019, the Internet Archive recovered 490,000 MP3s "using unknown means by an anonymous academic study conducted between 2008 and 2010". The songs, which were uploaded between 2008 and 2010, are collectively known as the "MySpace Dragon Hoard".[103]
The discs are entirely compliant with the Blu-Ray spec, there is no “compatibility” mark; anything made in the past 10-15 years should work fine. Your writer may be out of spec?
Apparently original M-Disc DVDs required a more powerful laser than normal, but that is not the case for Blu-Ray.
I ran Linux backups on BD-XL 100GB discs for awhile. I lacked access to space in a salt mine, and the M-DISC media was prohibitively expensive, and unnecessary, since the Linux system, its drives, and its backups have all gone away by now. And nothing of value was lost.
As of the 2020s, there are only 2 licensed manufacturers of M-Discs: Ritek, sold under the Ritek and RiDATA brands, and Verbatim with co-branded discs, marketed as the "Verbatim M-DISC".[14][15]
The discs sold as M-Discs now are actually just MABL BD-R's. They used to have a 'stone' data layer. Now they use a titanium metal data layer. MABL discs were always designed to last for about 100 years, and are orders of magnitude cheaper.
100 years is long enough, and 1000 years was always a wild-ass theoretical abstraction. The point is that you'll be dead before your disc is. If the next generation cares and drives are still available they can copy it to a new source.
These same discs are sold with a "Guarantee" as archival discs that are tested with heat/stress to last that 100 years, but any MABL disc really should,and they're much cheaper if you just get regular MABL discs. I think Pioneer is one of the big brands making the archival discs, or at least branding them. I last had to import mine from Japan. If you check the disc ID though, you'll see that archival discs are literally the same disc you can by cheaper without that label.
Some M-Discs still have a proprietary disc label, but my understanding is that even those just come off the same lines.
Some reading:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yu4j1u/psa_ver...
https://blu-raydisc.info/licensee-list/discmanuid-licenseeli... (search for verbatim and note the manufacturer column)
For things recorded today, nobody will care about refreshing for 75 heads, and if during 2100-2125 there are some budget constraints/wars/whatnot, the data will rot.
With 1000 years, you can just throw stuff into a bunker and all that it will take will be for someone in a period of 2800-3025 to take the time to refresh the library. 200 years should be enough to wait through a mild civ collapse or something.
Sure we’re talking about times beyond our lifetimes, but a lot if things we are sorrounded by were planned by people who knew they wouldn’t live to see the outcomes.
Verbatim / Millenniata loves to conflate claims about the original DVD M-DISC and the later BD-R M-DISC. But unlike DVD-R, standard BD-R already don't use organic dyes (with the exception of some low grade "LTH" discs). AFAIK there has never been good evidence that the BD-R M-DISCs have any special sauce compared to any other non-M-DISC BD-R. (Strengthened by the fact that there have never been compatibility issues or special equipment requirements to read/write M-DISC BD-R.)
The software will be an issue before the hardware anyway inevitably
Coincidentally I just bought one, they’ve doubled in price now recently.
Also bought some M-Discs to try. They’re half the price in Japan (Amazon) compared to Germany.
If, instead, we are talking about some human disaster and, that constant copies is lost at some point, we're kind of stuck. I don't think the technology to read those disks will exist either, even though in theory, yes, that could be done. It would be a massive reverse engineering effort and I don't think they will even know to start doing that with these weird disks that the agents had.
If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked, although we sometimes can't read the letters but at least seeing something with the eyes says there's something and if there's enough of them we have decoded language.
The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long. Paper has only been stored successfully in Egypt for that long. I'm sure there are other deserts though that would count just as well.
The British Domesday Book from 1086 is still referenced by historians for all sorts of purposes:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book
Not sure what kind of present-day data the historians of the future would be interested in.
> If you want something archived for a thousand years, well, we know that clay tablets baked worked […] The best archival paper in ideal conditions lasts more than a thousand years, but in more typical storage, we can't store paper that long.
Well, paper would best be stored in a fairly dry place, so deserts may be a starting point.
Generally the only institutions / organizations that have managed to survive for centuries / millennia have been monasteries. Temples/churches have often been close to communities for public worship, but most religious traditions seem to have groups of individuals that were a bit more 'removed' from society at large. Organizing around such things could be attempted (a plot point in Stephenson's Anathem.)
Generally burying stuff and leaving clues so that an 'advanced enough' society can unbury it at some point may be another idea.
We also need a mechanism that outlasts that archival lifespan so how to read Discs or Masked ROMs and how to interpret them, also needs to be stored as well. Repairing electronics is a valuable skill that needs to be passed on across generations as well.
Keeping humans around seems to be the best bet, given how things are going, I wouldn't count on the present set of beings around to preserve any of this information that well either.
For what? Nothing we do today will be even remotely important in 1,000 years. Any tiny fraction of a fraction that is important will have been copied thousands, millions, or billions of times into various formats.
- Ozymandias - By Percy Bysshe ShelleyAll sort of things done a thousand years ago still shape how we live today:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2187985.The_Origins_o...
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3624887-the-medieval-ori...
Who knows what the actions of a single, seemingly inconsequential, individual could trigger:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip
From what I understand, Verbatim no longer manufactures true M-DISC media. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/1i0ky6v/what_h...
It's all just MABL now.
I believe these discs are made by transferring materials by vaporizing them in a series of big vacuum chambers, maybe those materials are toxic and/or China dominated and nobody wants to deal with them anymore?
Large storage hyperscalers or whatever just use tape?
I can't wait for tape patents to expire.
For recording and forgetting, I recently played with LTO, again.
But I always end up at local HDD + remote AWS Glacier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_National_Archives_vault_f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
Also related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace#Music
citation needed. My DVD/Blu-ray writer does not support M-DISC
> may last up to 1000 years
or may not. Who knows ?
Apparently original M-Disc DVDs required a more powerful laser than normal, but that is not the case for Blu-Ray.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/new-m-disc-to-pro...
I ran Linux backups on BD-XL 100GB discs for awhile. I lacked access to space in a salt mine, and the M-DISC media was prohibitively expensive, and unnecessary, since the Linux system, its drives, and its backups have all gone away by now. And nothing of value was lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC#History
Any bluray reader will work to read tho.