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.
Verbatim clarified that these discs were advancements. The technical changes resulted in a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media-ID was due to an adaptation with regard to other Verbatim products. Verbatim had already shipped the first modified media in early 2022. The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: Data should also last 1000 years, according to the manufacturer.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs". Verbatim used to be owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media, and was sold to CMC Magnetics in 2020. The only two manufacturers I see on that page for Verbatim discs are Mitsubishi Chemical Media and CMC Magnetics.
Even verbatim's own website no longer makes the thousand year claim. Saying instead "several hundred years".
However their website also claims that the disc's use "etched" stone-like data layers, which is also demonstrably not true. Their own marketing says titanium in other places (on the spindle insert).
I think that Verbatim (or their shambling post-buyout animated corpse) just lies a lot or is filled with confusion about their own product.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs".
I wasn't aware of the chain of ownership. That said, they literally sell the same disc identifier as both m-disc and non m-disc.
I don't think it's just a reused ID either. If you put them next each other they're identical, and they use the same media label. The old disc's were both visually distinct and had a unique ID.
The only difference zeems to be packaging. I don't doubt that it's the same quality.
They stopped selling the much worse LTH discs and all the disc's are good now.
M-disc buyers get what they pay for (if they expect 100 years rather than 1000), it's just that everyone else also gets that for less money.
Yeah in general the value proposition of Blu-Ray M-Discs makes less sense vs. DVDs because the standard BD-Rs are also inorganic. One thing the random person on Reddit (and the people parroting his/her claims) don't seem to have realized is that the Blu-Ray M-Discs have always been visually identical to standard BD-Rs. Here's a review from 2015 that mentions this: https://goughlui.com/2015/10/16/review-tested-verbatim-lifet...
The disc itself does have a printable white top, but also features branding in the centre consisting of areas of clear hub. The underside looks pretty much the same as a normal BD-R, being metallic chocolate brown in colour. It is visually indistinguishable.
...
This bought me to a realization – unlike DVD’s, almost all regular BD-R discs do not use organic dye recording layers. Only BD-R LTH type discs do, and they have been shown to have poor longevity. With one of the main reasons for causing disc failure no longer an issue, it seems possible that this disc is not materially special compared to a regular BD-R.
The review also mentions that the text on the disc packaging quotes a lifetime of several hundred years, so that hasn't changed either. The actual M-Disc testing certification mentioned in the review quotes a 95% CI expected lifetime of 530 years and a mean expected lifetime of 1,000 years (meaning only half the discs can be expected to last that long).
M-Disc isn't an open standard, so the criteria for what is and isn't an M-Disc aren't publicly known. I think it's entirely possible that standard inorganic BD-Rs pass whatever criteria are necessary to call something an "M-Disc", and that there's never been any real difference between a high quality BD-R and an M-Disc BD-R.
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.)
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.
Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
They're owned by one of the other disc manufacturers (CMC Magnetics), so I think they're technically putting their name on their own discs. But, "they" is CMC now.
That misapplies systems thinking: It's necessary to have both the software and the hardware, so it is necessary to have the hardware.
By the above comment's reasoning, you wouldn't invest in hardware because you'll lack the software, and then you wouldn't invest in the software because you'll lack the hardware.
The hardware will definitely be a problem. Optical heads have elastomeric parts that are unlikely to last a century. They have precision plastic components that may become brittle. All of the knowhow and specialist tools to make and service them will be gone. USB and the drivers will still be around barring a complete collapse of civilization.
USB and the drivers will still be around barring a complete collapse of civilization.
Famous last words. At the current state of software you will need a specific UEFI version with a specific certificate (which expired in 6 days) running a specific Windows version with specific drivers version.
Damn, even LTO, which is used for archiving, is only compatible with 1 generation behind.
The human race is only able to make things to last, by accident.
I think more & more that hobbyists need to keep air gapped old-OS/hardware machines in the garage to manage this kind of stuff.
Otherwise you quickly run into connectivity / driver / application / OS compatibility hassles trying to get even 10-20 year old stuff from our own lifetime experience to run.
I'm not sure how we expect our great-grandchildren to figure out how to get data off a disc/drive in 100 years.
I can look at a film strip or print from my grandfather or play his records more easily than I can run software from my own childhood.
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.
Is there any kind of 'binning' going on that would make them different? A lot of things are made on the same assembly line, but after QC testing certain batches may be treated differently depending on the results.
Verbatim, who owns M-Disc, doesn't even manufacture discs anymore. They just slap their brand on other peoples discs.
Isn't that the case with all Western manufacturers these days? They buy stuff from China and slap their label on it. Management has no affinity with engineering and technology, all they know is marketing.
I'm wondering about which device I'd use in about 100 years, via which chain of Quantumbolt adapter to Gizmoidics Nineblazeultra to Akashix. Or would I have something in which I'd put the media, and had it directly scanned by advanced beamforming arrays?
I think it's more the size of the data rather than digital vs analog. you could have digital data stored on punch cards or say a large array of dip switches and it would last ages, but the storage density is terrible. Meanwhile disks and ssds store massive amounts of data on a very tiny space but it's prone to corruption over time.
Punch cards that are laser cut from metal would probably outlast stone tablets.
There is no fundamental difference between symbols inscribed on a stone tablet with a sharp tool versus symbols etched onto a reflective disc by a laser. In both cases you are recording symbolic information on a physical medium; they both record digital information.
The true difference between digital and “analogue” lies in the nature of the representation and interpretation of information, that is whether they are descriptions (symbolic) or analogies. The shape of the groove on a phonograph record is an analogy of a sound wave signal. The pits in a compact disc represent numerals which give a description of the amplitude of a signal at a given point in time.
Comments
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.
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)
A German news site reached out to Verbatim about this and got the response that the discs are still M-Discs and will still last 1,000 years: https://www.heise.de/news/Langzeitarchivierung-Verwirrung-um...
I'm not sure what you mean by "Verbatim just slaps their brand on other people's discs". Verbatim used to be owned by Mitsubishi Chemical Media, and was sold to CMC Magnetics in 2020. The only two manufacturers I see on that page for Verbatim discs are Mitsubishi Chemical Media and CMC Magnetics.
That's truly a strange article.
Even verbatim's own website no longer makes the thousand year claim. Saying instead "several hundred years".
However their website also claims that the disc's use "etched" stone-like data layers, which is also demonstrably not true. Their own marketing says titanium in other places (on the spindle insert).
I think that Verbatim (or their shambling post-buyout animated corpse) just lies a lot or is filled with confusion about their own product.
https://www.verbatim.com/en/m-disc/products/43847-m-disc-bd-...
I wasn't aware of the chain of ownership. That said, they literally sell the same disc identifier as both m-disc and non m-disc.
I don't think it's just a reused ID either. If you put them next each other they're identical, and they use the same media label. The old disc's were both visually distinct and had a unique ID.
The only difference zeems to be packaging. I don't doubt that it's the same quality.
They stopped selling the much worse LTH discs and all the disc's are good now.
M-disc buyers get what they pay for (if they expect 100 years rather than 1000), it's just that everyone else also gets that for less money.
Yeah in general the value proposition of Blu-Ray M-Discs makes less sense vs. DVDs because the standard BD-Rs are also inorganic. One thing the random person on Reddit (and the people parroting his/her claims) don't seem to have realized is that the Blu-Ray M-Discs have always been visually identical to standard BD-Rs. Here's a review from 2015 that mentions this: https://goughlui.com/2015/10/16/review-tested-verbatim-lifet...
...
The review also mentions that the text on the disc packaging quotes a lifetime of several hundred years, so that hasn't changed either. The actual M-Disc testing certification mentioned in the review quotes a 95% CI expected lifetime of 530 years and a mean expected lifetime of 1,000 years (meaning only half the discs can be expected to last that long).
M-Disc isn't an open standard, so the criteria for what is and isn't an M-Disc aren't publicly known. I think it's entirely possible that standard inorganic BD-Rs pass whatever criteria are necessary to call something an "M-Disc", and that there's never been any real difference between a high quality BD-R and an M-Disc BD-R.
They are all HTL now. There are no remaining manufacturers who produce LTH or use organic dyes in blu ray. That said, I agree.
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.)
Would like to hear more about the longevity of recordable blurays.
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.
They're owned by one of the other disc manufacturers (CMC Magnetics), so I think they're technically putting their name on their own discs. But, "they" is CMC now.
The software will be an issue before the hardware anyway inevitably
That misapplies systems thinking: It's necessary to have both the software and the hardware, so it is necessary to have the hardware.
By the above comment's reasoning, you wouldn't invest in hardware because you'll lack the software, and then you wouldn't invest in the software because you'll lack the hardware.
The hardware will definitely be a problem. Optical heads have elastomeric parts that are unlikely to last a century. They have precision plastic components that may become brittle. All of the knowhow and specialist tools to make and service them will be gone. USB and the drivers will still be around barring a complete collapse of civilization.
Famous last words. At the current state of software you will need a specific UEFI version with a specific certificate (which expired in 6 days) running a specific Windows version with specific drivers version. Damn, even LTO, which is used for archiving, is only compatible with 1 generation behind. The human race is only able to make things to last, by accident.
Include the source (don't use proprietary stuff), and keep it simple. That should not be an issue in this age.
I think more & more that hobbyists need to keep air gapped old-OS/hardware machines in the garage to manage this kind of stuff.
Otherwise you quickly run into connectivity / driver / application / OS compatibility hassles trying to get even 10-20 year old stuff from our own lifetime experience to run.
I'm not sure how we expect our great-grandchildren to figure out how to get data off a disc/drive in 100 years.
I can look at a film strip or print from my grandfather or play his records more easily than I can run software from my own childhood.
surely AI will just recode the entire system in minutes?
Yes, AI will simply vibe code drivers for devices it can't talk to in order to read formats it can't read
More likely it will just hallucinate content that plausibly could be on the disc and display that for the unwitting
Why would it not be able to talk to it? Clearly the io pinns can be connected forever…
I think we'll have the hallucination problems solved in a 1000 years. One would hope at least.
If 1000 year AI cannot write firmware & drivers for fairly standard discs, then AI has failed massively.
Is there any kind of 'binning' going on that would make them different? A lot of things are made on the same assembly line, but after QC testing certain batches may be treated differently depending on the results.
Isn't that the case with all Western manufacturers these days? They buy stuff from China and slap their label on it. Management has no affinity with engineering and technology, all they know is marketing.
I'm wondering about which device I'd use in about 100 years, via which chain of Quantumbolt adapter to Gizmoidics Nineblazeultra to Akashix. Or would I have something in which I'd put the media, and had it directly scanned by advanced beamforming arrays?
I buy the original Millenniata 'stone' DVDs from eBay[1]. They are only 4.7 gb though, not 25/100gb blue rays that verbatim sells.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/261878887064
Kind of interesting how analog media is still the best archival media. Throw your data on a stone tablet it's going to last 10,000 years.
I think it's more the size of the data rather than digital vs analog. you could have digital data stored on punch cards or say a large array of dip switches and it would last ages, but the storage density is terrible. Meanwhile disks and ssds store massive amounts of data on a very tiny space but it's prone to corruption over time.
Punch cards that are laser cut from metal would probably outlast stone tablets.
There is no fundamental difference between symbols inscribed on a stone tablet with a sharp tool versus symbols etched onto a reflective disc by a laser. In both cases you are recording symbolic information on a physical medium; they both record digital information.
The true difference between digital and “analogue” lies in the nature of the representation and interpretation of information, that is whether they are descriptions (symbolic) or analogies. The shape of the groove on a phonograph record is an analogy of a sound wave signal. The pits in a compact disc represent numerals which give a description of the amplitude of a signal at a given point in time.
Analog: https://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/
The older M-Data discs actually claimed to use a stone data layer.
Information density tho'...