M-Disc Vs. Regular HTL (Inorganic) Blu Ray For Archival. Whats The Difference?

The M-Disc was billed as an archival grade form of optical storage with unrivalled disc longevity properties of 1,000 years. The M-Disc boasted of doing so through holding an inorganic "rock like" layer. But if regular (HTL) Verbatim Blu Rays also use an inorganic layer ... what's the difference exactly? In this video I look a bit deeper into this question, discuss what's known about the M-Disc's "rock like" layer, look at MABL, and talk about some other archival grade optical media that's made it to market.

[RockTo]

We need someone with an electron microscope to image a BD-R and an M-Disc.

[craconia]

Hi Daniel. There's a podcast called "The Backup Wrap-up" (mainly enterprise storage). It has two interesting episodes on M-disc (and one of them is with Barry Lunt that you recently interviewed). In case you didn't know about...

[vinishshetty]

When you check online for 100gb Mdisc verbatim sells unbranded 100gb blu ray discs, However are those regular BD R or Mdisc archival quality discs, This is really confusing.

[marcogenovesi]

"rock" is an incredibly generic term that encompasses wildly different minerals, from literal compacted sand (sedimentary rocks) to metal (pyrite) to glass-like (quartz and most crystals). In this case I'm pretty confident it's just marketing to say that they use an inorganic layer. This makes it sound better and easier to understand for laymen that would probably not grasp right away what "inorganic" means.
The other text is just saying things that other disks also have, like "multiple layers of dissimilar materials" and the fact that laser heat would do physical changes when writing to punch holes. Also organic-based disks work like that, it's just how all recordable disks work (as opposed to pressed disks in mass production)

[Snowwie]

1:46 - I do not totally agree with you. I have a good example here that happened in my situation. So in 2020 I went to Mexico, shot a lot of video's with my then Samsung Galaxy S9 phone. The phone recorded in 4K, 60fps, and gave an output file in the mp4 container. When I got back home, I copied all the files from my computer, also to the external backup drive, my backup/media server, my 2nd backup pc AND I burned two regular Blu-Ray discs. After a while something weird happened. Of the collection of like 30 mp4 files, 3 of them were suddenly corrupt. So I opened my external drive, also those same files, corrupt. Server and 2nd pc, even those two had the same files corrupt. was lucky that I also burned the video files to Blu-ray disc. Since these discs are only writable once and totally disconnected from the network they saved me those 3 files. Copying your files constantly from one older media to a newer one is not always a guarantee that the integrity of the file will remain solid. These days I do not only copy mp4 files to my external backup locations but also make password protected rar volumes with a reasonable amount of par files (for recovery) to be more secure. Sadly enough when I built my new pc last year I bought a case that cannot house a 5.25" optical drive anymore, and my Blu-ray writer also has died. I would love that this technique would evolve further so we can store 1TB on a single optical disc. Those discs are also less prone to external factors. One lightning strike on your house, or even in the neighborhood can generate an EMP that can totally wipe all your data, but will not affect the discs. So, optical discs for backup; I recommend it.

[cmoneytheman]

When I first heard of br in the PS3 era, they said they were scratch-proof. I'm just now finding out about the m version today.

It makes no sense to me to buy a way overpriced hd disc when I can just get the regular version and just keep them in a case. They last for years and are way cheaper. I had regular CDs from 10 years ago, and they still work. Some skip with music on them cause they have scratches, but they still work.

[oliverbutterfield]

Hi Daniel. I really appreciate your content. I’ve resurrected an old blu ray disk burner (with M Disc logo on the front) which I never used to burn anything ever. I’m currently trying to catalog and organise the data I have, with a view to archiving some of it properly. Archival blu ray seems ideal, so I’m currently really trying to understand the actual differences in the product lines. Not so easy, it seems!

[OpenGLever]

The biggest problem with the M-DISC is the lack of drives. I have a whole series of old CD and DVD drives, all my DVD burners can even read and write DVD-RAM. I made sure that they can do this when I bought them. But not a single one can read a BR M-DISC, and I don't know whether they can also read a DVD M-DISC, but it doesn't help because you can't buy a DVD-based M-DISC anymore anyway. Today there are only BR M-DISC available. So I could buy a new burner that can also read and write BR MD-DISC, but that would be my only drive then.
What will I do in 30 years when the drive no longer works? With a CD-R I would at least have the opportunity to try out a whole series of old drives. Even DVD-RAM, the number of old drives available would be greater. And even if you don't take my own drives into account here, the same applies to the drives of friends. Some people would still have a drive that can read CD-R and DVD-R. With DVD-RAM the number is already significantly smaller, but with the BD MD-DISC it is vanishingly small.
The writable BD was simply introduced far too late, there were already USB sticks available with a capacity of several GB for little money. That's why there aren't enough PCs with BD drives. Consoles are something entirely different, but consoles are not designed to read private data and then copy it over to some PC.

[TonyGarrett-pc]

I wonder how it would work to store the M-discs or even regular optical discs in an oxygen-free environment? Like sealed in mylar bags or metal cans, with oxygen absorbers and/or nitrogen fill?

[beosliege]

I can’t help but wonder who the guy is gonna be, 1, 000 years from now, having fabricated their own laser reading device, setting down to read an m-disc found at an archaeological site to see if it really could last a thousand years. 😂 Seriously it would be really interesting to see! The M-Disc creator will be resurrected as an AI for live reactions during the momentous event.

Haha, seriously I love your vids, thanks.

[madfinntech]

It seems my BD-R discs are the short-lived LTH type, the worst type; I burned a little over a decade ago, but they still work fine as I recently tested them all except for one disc that I couldn't copy all the data off. I'm considering possibly buying better discs and re-archiving those LTH types, plus the new stuff I need to archive. I really should do this more often than once a decade. A decade before that, my stuff is still on DVD+R discs; maybe I should consider doing something about those, too. To my surprise, all those still work.

[RockTo]

1000 year durability is good, and better than say, Sony's 50-year 128GB discs, and not just because of longevity. The reason, I think, is because that difference shows that the M-Disc having a longer lifespan means that is is more durable, and therefore would hopefully be more resistant to non-favorable environmental factors.

[EvilDaveCanada]

WARNING
Never use a backup system that relies on BOTH a proprietary Media AND proprietary hardware. I have some very old 9 track data tape. If I can find a 9 track data tape drive, then the data can be extracted. I also have a few data tapes from the early years of the PC that need a specific type of tape drive that was not widely used. The 9 track tape drives were in wide use from the 50s to the 90s and possibly even the 2000s. Big companies have their accounting data backed up on these to satisfy governments' tax data retention laws.

[marcseen]

One of my oldest discs is a CD-R (can't remember the brand of the top of my head) containing a pirate copy of Windows XP. Just sitting around for 21 years, it's fine!

[RScesium]

Daniel.
A metal nitride is an inorganic salt containing a metal and a nitride ion - N3-

[RockTo]

YouTube keeps deleting my comments with links. I've found a web page from Pioneer which explains MABL, and has an electron micrograph image of the disc surface. Basically, it seems that the laser melts the metal data layer when writing.

[fredeso]

I 100% agree with your opening statement regards migrating data to new media from time to time.

Back in the 90s, Panasonic sold inorganic, phase-change PD discs, which had the capacity of a CD. The same technology later reappeared as DVD-RAM, a DVD-RW / +RW competitior. While these were rewritable discs, similar marketing claims about longevity echo in my mind. I had a Panasonic laptop with a PD drive in the late 90s and a DVD-R / RAM home recoder in the early 2000s. Those discs were unreliable garbage in their intended application as rewritable media, yet you won't find a bad review about them, only regurgitated marketing claims. Sounds familiar?

I am at maximum volume but I cannot hear you

[awdrifter]

None of these will last 1000 years. The plastic the disc is made from will probably degrade before 1000 years (in normal storage conditions). I think 100 years is good enough, by that time if the data is important it'll be backed up in another medium.

[maciejkowalski]

so basically u dont know what mdisc layer is