I have a 16TB drives x8 bay NAS with single drive redundancy, but something a little more bullet proof is a bonus. Both in regards to storage medium and the online landscape as billionaires/government increasingly lock down the internet. That and the long term prospects of upkeep on this NAS as drives die. Prices are screwed, across a lot of PC components as we all know. I think a lot of consumer hardware targeting businesses will die off over time.
First time using K3b or burning a disc on Linux, but it’s straightforward enough. The plan is to archive everything up to Sixth generation for now. 1972 - 2007 in total. Someone had a bunch of these Panasonic UJ272 UJ-272 9.5mm SATA OEM burners on eBay for cheap so I bought one and a simple USB enclosure.
Cheapest I’ve found online for Verbatim brand per disc is $7.55 CAD / $5.38 USD if you know of a cheaper source or reliable alt-brand, let me know. I think anything 7th gen and beyond, tape drives start to make more sense but that’s quite the initial investment. Maybe when I’m another decade older :P Three spools to get me started.
Cool project, and big respect!
And just curious, could you find the estimated lifespan of those discs in particular? I know they can vary from 5 to 100 years depending on technology.
Verbatim themselves guesstimate about 50 years, but triple layer 100GB has the least field data admittedly. These are inorganic too, which supposedly helps.
Idk but I’ve still got cheap AF CD-Rs from 25+ years ago that’re scratched as hell from my car, and still play music. Yes BD-R encoding is MUCH smaller (~25GB/layer vs 700MB), but the lifespan should be expected to be the same if not longer, outside testing.
From what I’ve read the biggest difference for writeabke blu rays is if they’re dye-type or foil-type. Allegedly the dye-type ones are only good for 5-10 years. Most foil type writeable ones are rated for up to 50 years. And M-disc should be around for future archeologists to wonder how to get the data off of them, but it’ll be there.
Edit: and with slightly more googling, I think BD-XL is supposed to be good for 100 years? And seems like M-disc is BD-XL, but not all BD-XL are M-disc?
You read the same I did, I think M-disc mattered more for DVD.
Hmm. OK I could see the dye fading or discoloring over time, whereas foil, being thin metal, would be more resilient. Maybe the M-disc or XL being a thicker or better composition alloy coating.
I guess the real question is for OP to decide how long they want the data archived for, before a possibly cheaper and denser method becomes available. If it were $5/disc and it held 50GB, that’s $100/TB, and even at insane storage costs now, I feel HDD would be better off after redundancy costs.
Not to really compare, but I’ve got used 3TB enterprise SAS drive from 2013 still spinning 24/7 (knock on wood) which have outlasted all consumer drives I’ve had. So, again, quality plays it’s part. And while spinning discs are expected to last 5-8 years, its just a “rating”…
Don’t want to put words in their mouth, my guess is for as long as they live. It’s an archive of what is now retro, and will one day be considered historic video games.
There’s a large chance OP will never have to read off them, but if they have catastrophic data loss and the future internet isn’t a free place, I bet they’d be pretty smug getting a dust old box out of their cellar and pulling out their very own library of Alexandria of games.
Your words are correct, although I would add a future tech storage medium probably if it makes sense to. You can have discs and no surviving functional drive to read them with. Although I think a bit of lubricant and maybe replace the few caps this tiny thing possibly has in it would revive one pretty easily, like any seized floppy or optical drive. Desiccant in air-tight storage totes with the discs I think is the plan. Crawl space to keep them cool. I do need to find binders with archival polypropylene or Tyvek sleeves. Apparently the standard ones use PVC which have plasticizers that can deposit onto the disc surface or react with the hard coat slowly over years. Or buy a butt load of jewel cases, that seems unnecessary.
edit: Curious Marc has an extreme example of recovering data from a fossil media format, which some weirdos like me may enjoy watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FVwheTVWko
Yeah I was going to say it’s probably worth keeping a drive with them. Who knows how long those will last.
But it’s a cool project, the data hoarder version of doomsday prepping.
I wish I could find it, but this reminded me of a project I remember seeing about 10 years ago. Someone made a little cyberdeck thing with its own screen and keyboard, and a crank to power it, and on it they had the entirety of Wikipedia at the time. The idea was to have it as a record of a huge chunk of human knowledge offline, and on a device that in theory would last a very long time.
I like this idea, even though it’s the opposite of dull haha.
I do have to ask: have you considered tape backup? Even the latest LTO-10 isn’t as dense as a single BD XL disc, but the read/write speed for linear data would be higher and sustained. Whereas a disc often only gets faster when reading the outer edge. This would be most useful when periodically verifying that the backup is still intact.
There are automatic tape libraries, but that’s quite the investment, I think.
I’ve considered tape of course, it’s just not in the household budget for now. One day it’ll happen because I want to archive 7th generation and then all the digital store front PC games I have modern day. Beyond that I don’t care very much about 8th on-wards. I’d be more selective there instead of saving full-sets. Legacy PC I’ll archive the eXo projects.
There’s a higher priority item in the budget involving DIY (as much as possible) solar power within 2 years before Fuckerberg powers on his Albertan data center…before the power plant dedicated to powering it is finished. Yep. I worry about future power bills.
Also, burning discs is dull! Nobody I know cares. We just find dull things interesting :P Well, at least IMO.
Fellow Oxygen theme user…🫡
Nice to see someone else doing a similar thing! I use Verbatim M-Disc BDXL for my cold storage backups. I believe all Verbatim BD-R discs are ceramic (no dyes), with the current M-Disc variants supposedly having the longest life of any BD-R. I’ve seen it claimed to be up to 300 years, but I’d be more than happy with just 50. :)
The reason I went with the M-Discs was because of an endurance test that I saw someone do. They put a bunch of discs outdoors, facing the sun, and eventually, the M-Disc was the sole survivor. This was even after Verbatim changed the manufacturing process (and dropped the 1000 year claim that I doubt was true in the first place). If I can find it, I’ll edit this later with a link.
Anyway, probably not necessary for either of our purposes, I just decided to start hoarding M-Discs because while they were more expensive than Verbatim’s standard BD-R, they were still cheaper than a tape drive setup. Additionally, I don’t have to worry as much about the PNW humidity ruining my storage medium. I was (and still am) concerned about blu-ray discs getting killed off, so that’s another reason why I started scooping them up. This all reminds me, I need to buy another couple of drives while I still can…
Lots of drives on eBay still!
How are you storing your discs?
I’m storing them in a safe, upright (not laying down), in jewel cases. I’m going to ship some to my family in a different part of the country to protect against localized natural disasters.
