Consumer grade optical storage has always been a bit of a gamble when it comes to reliability, especially when it comes to cheap commodity media and your ‘average’ drive compatibility, resulting in burns with uncertain lifetime if care isn’t taken to choose quality media, and select suitable storage conditions for the media.
Despite the declining relevance of optical storage formats, which have failed to keep pace with storage needs, Millenniata introduced their M-Disc DVD+R discs utilizing a “rock-like” inorganic recording layer, doing away with the failure-prone reflective layer and dye-based recording layers entirely. While the discs were difficult to obtain, and had limited compatibility, issues with rigidity and limited recording rates, the archival performance of these discs were proven by US Military Department of Defense testing, and it was clear from the construction of the discs that the material was in fact, very much a special blend.
Of course, the capacity of a DVD is hardly enough for the modern era, so the M-Disc branding has now been applied to a range of BD-R’s at 25Gb, 50Gb (DL) and 100Gb (XL TL) capacities. Some of these were introduced over two years ago, however, I hadn’t been able to get my hands on any of them for testing until just recently when a local duplicator company began to stock them.
The Product
The discs in question were purchased under the Verbatim Lifetime Archival branding. While the discs themselves are likely to be produced by Ritek under license, the discs are branded Verbatim due to a co-branding agreement signed 12th January 2015. It was purchased as a 5 pack of BD-R single layer 25Gb discs, rated at 4x, for AU$45.40 or AU$9.08 per disc which is pretty expensive. The discs claim to be Made in Taiwan, which is expected if Ritek are involved. I’m hoping they’re going to be very special for that price.
The outer thin card box is designed so as to be able to be separated into a display case. The front has the Blu-ray logo desaturated, which I’m sure is not an approved variation of the logo, but is likely because M-disc utilizes a similar blue in their logo and they would prefer consumers not associate M-disc with Blu-ray. The rear of the box contains a multilingual blurb, with some marketing comparison material on the sides. The discs are inkjet printable type.
I have had extensive trouble with Ritek media in the past, and have generally avoided them since, but I suppose Ritek isn’t incapable of producing good media – after all, they did produce Ricoh DVD’s under license as well, which were excellent.
Inside, the discs are housed in a clear-tray-ed regular sized jewel case. The inlay card is folded and features an internal area for writing an index.
The rear insert provides care instructions and identical text to the outside rear of the box.
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.
The media itself has a media code of MILLEN-MR1-000, with full media code block in the Appendix One. The burst cutting area shows the text MBD4R062D.
Getting the Right Tool for the Job
With the original M-Discs, recording was only properly achieved with M-Disc ready drives. The rear of the Verbatim packaging states “For use in all BD writers & recorders.” However, a quick visit to M-disc’s webpage shows, a list of compatible drives is listed on their webpage. It seems likely that M-disc BD-R is indeed not optimally utilized in any writer, namely due to the use of a different media ID code which may not have a write strategy present in the firmware.
The list of drives for Blu-ray generally covers a wide-range of LG, Pioneer, Panasonic and Asus drives with the notable exception of any Lite-On drives (only some are M-disc DVD only certified). There is a note on their webpage that states:
Note: All Panasonic Blu-ray writer drives from UJ240 and newer are expected to support M-Disc Blu-ray even if they are not listed here.
As a result, it seems that support for the M-disc BD-R is wider than it was for the DVD disc, which was claimed to require higher laser powers and “special” drives for that reason.
Out of my drives, the only candidates are the Pioneer BDR-209DBK (my favourite), and the Panasonic UJ-240 (which isn’t particularly good). In the end, I decided to stick with the Pioneer, so as not to waste the expensive discs.
According to their site, the discs should work with firmware version 1.10 and above, although a gander through the change-logs at Pioneer states otherwise (red emphasis mine).
As I was running firmware version 1.30, I was good to go!
Recording Quality Check
A disc was filled to within 1Mb of its nominal capacity and successfully recorded with the Pioneer BDR-209DBK at 4x. The resulting disc was transfer-rate checked on three drives:
Pioneer BDR-209DBK
LG GGW-H20L
Lite-On iHBS312
Aside from some very small bumps in the Pioneer’s transfer rate test graph, all the drives read back the disc with no read errors and at a smooth rate.
A LDC/BIS and Jitter scan was performed using the Lite-On iHBS312 at 4x.
The scan confirms an exemplary burn quality which low initial errors – conservatively speaking, the guideline for a good burn is an average LDC threshold is 13, and peak BIS threshold is 9, which this well surpasses. The jitter level is also very impressive at about 9.1%, stable throughout the burn. The burn quality appears to indicate the media to recorder compatibility is excellent, with no evidence of increasing errors towards the outer edge.
An FE/TE scan was also performed on the burnt media to ascertain the quality of the physical construction of the disc.
The resulting scan was only possible at 2x due to drive limitations (as the disc is not supported by the burner). The readings are relatively stable and low, which is a sign of quality disc construction. For cross reference, please see Appendix Two with FE/TE scans of other media for comparison.
Wait a Minute … Detective Gough is on the Case!
While the immediate burn quality seems relatively satisfactory, I was still not satisfied as to whether these discs were truly worth their premium over commodity blank media. Looking at the discs, it seemed that the recording layers were likely made of similar materials based on the visual aspect, unlike the obvious difference with DVDs. Also, it seemed that regular recorders were intended to be able to record to the BD-R’s (according to the Verbatim text).
Two questions came to mind – are these discs truly different from commodity media (as the M-Disc DVD was), and how long do they last.
This is where the M-disc case seems to unravel slightly. When looking at their website, it is clear that details on the BD-R version are scant. Upon looking at their website, they claim that the BD-R is based on the same 1,000 year standard.
However, careful reading of the back of the Verbatim packaging says:
Projected lifetime of several hundred years based on ISO/IEC 20995 tests by Millenniata.
So what is it? Is it several hundred years? or is it a thousand years?
Digging further around the M-disc site, it is noted that their section on longevity testing actually features no data about the BD-R discs at all. Indeed, if there were tests, the reports were not actually featured on the site at all. Further poking around in M-Disc Technology pages shows only references to their DVD products. In fact, it seems their patented “etched in stone” material may only apply to their DVD products.
This is when I stumble across the only ISO/IEC 10995 data I could find in regard to Millenniata, a certificate issued to them for their M-Disc DVD. This certificate states the following:
- The M-Disc DVD (as tested) demonstrated a mean expected lifetime under typical ambient conditions (22 degrees
Celsius and 50% Relative Humidity) of over 1,000 years.- The M-Disc DVD (as tested) demonstrated an expected lifetime at the 95% confidence level of over 530 years under a
storage environment maintained at 22 degrees Celsius and 50% Relative Humidity.
This possibly explains the problem with the lifetime seen above – they managed a mean expected lifetime under 22 degrees C and 50% R.H. of over 1,000 years, but 95% confidence level is only 530 years. This means it is likely that only half the batch of discs makes it to 1,000 years, with 95% of them making it to 530 years. This also implies that the standard deviation is 235 years, meaning a ~ 0.5% population of the discs may lie in the range of <295 years. Of course, this is all statistics and it boils down to the issue of the validity of accelerated life testing.
Advertising your discs to last 1,000 years when only about half will is a bit dishonest.
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.
Indeed, if we look at other archival media options, there are media from MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media, Verbatim), Panasonic and JVC. Lets examine these more closely.
The Panasonic media claims a 50 year Archive Design, based upon 25 degrees C and 80% RH environment using accelerated age testing results conducted by Panasonic (although the results are not publicly accessible). Note that these criteria are more stringent than the M-Disc tests above, which had lower temperature and significantly lower relative humidity. The discs are all inspected by recording drives.
JVC media doesn’t appear to have much information, although they do have an archive BD-R solution which involves media testing and migration. It’s similar to what hobbyists like myself have occasionally done.
Most interesting is the Verbatim MKM BD-R DL and TL archive life test summary. When using the ISO/IEC 10995 standard for 95% confidence at 25 degrees C, 50% RH, their BD-R DL achieved a lifetime of 554 years and their BD-R TL achieved a lifetime of 3588 years. It seems that regular quality BD-R discs can achieve projected lifetimes to failure of a similar magnitude to that of M-Disc DVDs which achieved 530 years under slightly cooler conditions.
I think that Panasonic may have been conservative with their lifetimes, but it seems entirely plausible based on this evidence from MKM/Verbatim that the M-Disc BD-R is a higher quality, possibly cherry-picked/factory-tested BD-R disc with substantially similar physical and chemical composition. In light of this, it seems their lack of details in the lifetimes of the discs and comparing them with other products on the market seems to be obvious as if the discs did not offer significant benefits over the competition, they could not command the high prices that they presently charge.
Conclusion
The M-Disc BD-R commands a significant premium over the competition, and seems to offer a quality burn (with a sample size of one), albeit a slower one at 4x. Despite the initial claims of the M-Disc DVD creating the “wave” of interest, it seems that the M-Disc BD-R is not as highly documented, or researched, and this lack of information is disconcerting.
Further to that, the contradictions in the supplied information really cause us to question whether the M-Disc BD-R is actually a special product and whether it does live up to the claims. From my research into the data, it seems likely that the M-Disc BD-R is not substantially different from other quality BD-R discs on the market as they all use inorganic recording compounds (with the exception of BD-R LTH of course). From a visual inspection, the disc appears the same bright chocolate-brown, unlike the obvious distinction with regular dye based DVDs and the M-Disc DVD which was a silver-grey. But my main concern lies in the demonstrated lifetimes of quality BD-Rs which are similar to the M-Disc DVD (to which the M-Disc BD-R is claimed to have also achieved). In essence, it appears that the MKM/Verbatim BD-R DL has already reached the same level of endurance as the M-Disc DVD had claimed without being “special” at all.
It is thus, hard to justify paying more for an M-Disc BD-R, and I cannot really recommend it. Aside from this, it seems the relevance of slow optical media is waning, and the storage requirements for BD-R are quite onerous, as I’ve realized storing them in sleeves is a sure way to destruction over a few years.
Epilogue: Firmware Upgrade for the Pioneer BDR-209DBK
It was not until after I wrote the disc that I realized that there was a firmware upgrade for the BDR-209DBK, although the change-log does not appear to note any changes to BD-R writing since Firmware 1.30 which was used. The upgrade was successful under my Windows 7 machine, however.
Appendix One: Media Code Block
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unique Disc Identifier : [BD-R-SL:MILLEN-MR1-000] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disc Type : [BD-R SL : Class 0 - Version 1] Manufacturer Name : [Manufacturer Not Found In Database] Manufacturer ID : [MILLEN] Media Type ID : [MR1] Product Revision : [000] Stamper Date : [Not Present On Disc] Layer Info : [1 Layer (L0) : 25.03 GB (23.31 GiB) Per Layer] Blank Disc Capacity : [12,219,392 Sectors = 25.03 GB (23.31 GiB)] Recording Speeds : [1x , 2x , 4x] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** INFO : Hex Dump Of 'Media Code'-Block Listed Below ** INFO : 4-Byte Header Preceding 'Media Code'-Block Discarded ** INFO : Format 00h - Disc Information 0000 : 44 49 01 40 00 00 62 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 0010 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0020 : 01 ec 64 64 28 28 28 28 1e 1e 1e 1e 00 00 00 00 ..dd((((........ 0030 : 40 42 80 22 22 3f 1c 6c a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 @B.""?.l........ 0040 : 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 58 00 58 .....`.`.`.`.X.X 0050 : 00 58 00 58 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 a0 a0 c0 .X.X.`.`.`.`.... 0060 : c0 c0 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 0070 : 44 49 01 40 00 01 62 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 0080 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0090 : 01 ec 64 64 28 28 28 28 1e 1e 1e 1e 00 00 00 00 ..dd((((........ 00a0 : 40 42 80 22 22 3f 1c 6c a0 f8 f8 f8 f8 00 00 00 @B.""?.l........ 00b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 58 00 58 .....`.`.`.`.X.X 00c0 : 00 58 00 58 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 60 00 a0 a0 c0 .X.X.`.`.`.`.... 00d0 : c0 c0 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 00e0 : 44 49 03 40 00 02 51 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 00f0 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0100 : 03 d7 64 64 28 2d 2d 2d 1e 23 23 23 00 00 00 00 ..dd(---.###.... 0110 : 4c 42 8b a0 0c 3c 1d 8f f0 f0 e0 10 10 10 10 10 LB...<.......... 0120 : 10 28 28 28 2c 2c 2c 48 48 48 38 38 38 60 98 a0 .(((,,,HHH888`.. 0130 : 94 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0140 : 00 00 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 0150 : 44 49 03 40 00 03 51 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 0160 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0170 : 03 d7 64 64 28 2d 2d 2d 1e 23 23 23 00 00 00 00 ..dd(---.###.... 0180 : 4c 42 84 a0 0c 3c 1d 8f e8 e8 d0 28 28 28 20 20 LB...<.....((( 0190 : 20 30 30 30 2c 2c 2c 48 48 48 44 44 44 60 90 90 000,,,HHHDDD`.. 01a0 : 90 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 01b0 : 00 00 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 01c0 : 44 49 01 40 00 04 62 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 01d0 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 01e0 : 03 d7 64 64 28 2d 2d 2d 1e 23 23 23 00 00 00 00 ..dd(---.###.... 01f0 : 58 40 84 12 12 33 1b 64 a0 08 08 08 08 08 08 08 [email protected]........ 0200 : 08 00 00 00 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 .....X.X.X.X.X.X 0210 : 00 58 00 58 00 70 00 70 00 70 00 70 00 a0 b0 e8 .X.X.p.p.p.p.... 0220 : e8 e8 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 0230 : 44 49 01 40 00 05 62 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 0240 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0250 : 03 d7 64 64 28 2d 2d 2d 1e 23 23 23 00 00 00 00 ..dd(---.###.... 0260 : 58 40 7d 12 12 33 1b 64 a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 X@}..3.d........ 0270 : 00 00 00 00 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 00 58 .....X.X.X.X.X.X 0280 : 00 58 00 58 00 70 00 70 00 70 00 70 00 a0 b0 e8 .X.X.p.p.p.p.... 0290 : e8 e8 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 02a0 : 44 49 03 40 00 06 51 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 02b0 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 02c0 : 07 b0 64 64 28 46 46 46 1e 3c 3c 3c 00 00 00 00 ..dd(FFF.<<<.... 02d0 : 68 42 7d 9d 0a 2b 1d 64 e4 e0 cc 40 40 40 40 40 hB}..+.d...@@@@@ 02e0 : 40 50 50 50 4c 4c 4c 48 48 48 50 50 50 60 98 98 @PPPLLLHHHPPP`.. 02f0 : 98 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0300 : 00 00 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 0310 : 44 49 03 40 00 07 51 00 42 44 52 01 12 01 00 00 [email protected]..... 0320 : 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 19 4e 7e ..............N~ 0330 : 07 b0 64 64 28 46 46 46 1e 3c 3c 3c 00 00 00 00 ..dd(FFF.<<<.... 0340 : 68 42 7d 9d 09 2b 1d 64 e4 e0 cc 40 40 40 40 40 hB}..+.d...@@@@@ 0350 : 40 50 50 50 4c 4c 4c 48 48 48 50 50 50 60 98 98 @PPPLLLHHHPPP`.. 0360 : 98 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0370 : 00 00 00 00 4d 49 4c 4c 45 4e 4d 52 31 00 00 00 ....MILLENMR1... 0380 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0390 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 03f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0400 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0410 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0420 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0430 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0440 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0450 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0460 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0470 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0480 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0490 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 04f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0500 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0510 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0520 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0530 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0540 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0550 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0560 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0570 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0580 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0590 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 05f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0600 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0610 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0620 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0630 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0640 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0650 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0660 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0670 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0680 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0690 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 06f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0700 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0710 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0720 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0730 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0740 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0750 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0760 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0770 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0780 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0790 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 07f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0800 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0810 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0820 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0830 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0840 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0850 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0860 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0870 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0880 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0890 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 08f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0900 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0910 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0920 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0930 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0940 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0950 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0960 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0970 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0980 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0990 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09a0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09b0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09c0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09d0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09e0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 09f0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a00 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a10 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a20 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a30 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a40 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a50 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a60 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a70 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a80 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0a90 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0aa0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0ab0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0ac0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0ad0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0ae0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0af0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b00 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b10 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b20 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b30 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b40 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b50 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b60 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b70 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b80 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0b90 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0ba0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0bb0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0bc0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0bd0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0be0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0bf0 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0c00 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0c10 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0c20 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 0c30 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 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00 00 00 ................ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ DVD Identifier V5.2.0 - http://DVD.Identifier.CDfreaks.com ] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix Two: FE/TE Scans of Other Media
To provide a reference point, several other types of media were subjected to FE/TE scans using the same equipment. Of note is that none of the other media were able to be scanned at 2x, so direct comparison of values is not possible – but it is possible to generalize that the Millenniata BD-R appears to show good results consistent with other media.
Spikes in these scans may reflect media blemishes and dust, whereas increased TE/FE is expected at higher speeds which place greater mechanical rigidity requirements on the discs.
PHILIP-R04 (Tevion Branded, Made in India)
CMCMAG-BA5 (Imation Branded, Made in Taiwan)
PRODIS-CR0 (Unbranded, Made in Taiwan)
TYG-BD-Y05 (That’s Branded, LTH, Made in Japan)
VERBAT-IMv (Verbatim Branded, LTH, Made in Taiwan)
So the M-DISC BD is just a regular BD? (Or rather, a regular BD is already as good as M-DISC?) Their website is selling them at roughly $3 per disc. I bought around 15 of them hoping they would be of somewhat higher quality than a BD for archival purposes, but it turns out their entire company is running a well oiled scam.
Thanks for the blog post, it was super informative. You should really publicize this post and get Millenniata to comment, they shouldn’t really be allowed to get away this sort of stuff.
Actually, I left a comment on here an hour ago. Your name didn’t really click for me until just then – are you Gough Lui from SHS? We went to the same school 🙂
Yes, I did go to Sefton High :).
– Gough
Two of the drives you used aren’t even M-DISC writers, certainly not on Milleniata’s drive list. You might want to go back to that High School and take basic science class again…
I’m sorry but you’re the one that needs to go back to primary school as you obviously did not read the article.
The disc was burnt with the Pioneer BDR-209DBK which is on the approved drive list as stated. The other drives were used to assess the BURNED disc readability ONLY. They did not burn the disc AT ALL. If you burn a BD-R with a drive, regardless of M-Disc or not, you EXPECT compatibility with readers, and indeed the M-Disc packaging claims readback compatibility with all drives.
If you don’t know the term Transfer Rate Check aka TRT, or LDC/BIS scan, or FE/TE scan, then you shouldn’t really be commenting on this article at all.
There is no flaw in the methodology. You need to open your eyes and stop wasting people’s time with misleading comments.
– Gough
What you call the BCA in all your posts are the ring codes or the mould codes (depending on it being on the reflective layer or not).
The BCA (Burst Cutting Area) is ALWAYS a barcode, that’s written by a YAG laser and ONLY appears on DVD and Blu-ray (never on CDs). While their specifications provide support for having BCA on recordable discs it’s not extensively used, but required by some copy protection features.
You can get yourself used to differentiate BCAs just looking at any Nintendo optical disc (GameCube, Wii, etc) as they use the BCAs as an essential part of their copy protection system.
There are also photos in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burst_cutting_area and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_optical_discs
Specially in the last one you can see the disc has another barcode different from the BCA. This is also standard and it’s the IFPI barcode, that can be present in CDs and supposedly read by some drives (have yet to find one able to myself).
Thanks for that correction – I’ll be sure to keep it in mind for future postings. I didn’t realize that the inner area was distinguished from BCA area until now, so thanks for clearing that up.
– Gough
Did I get it right? You suggest that the M-disc BD-R and regular BD-R’s look the same, and both use inorganic material. BUT…didn’t it take longer to burn the M-disc BD-R? Doesn’t that suggest that they are different in some way that is not otherwise obvious. Might (I say “might”) that suggest that the longevity of the recorded material might be different, too?
That is true, however, one has to realize that the recording speed restriction is due to the write strategy programmed into the Pioneer BDR-209DBK’s firmware. People such as myself have, at least with other drives with more easily amended firmware, done strategy swaps and bit changes to unlock higher record speeds – it generally has little to do with the disc itself.
Instead, my expectation is that they opted to lock recording at 4x as it is a CLV strategy which does not have error spikes at speed transitions that Z-CLV at higher speeds would have, and or the vibrational stability issues of CAV especially towards the outer edge of the disc. Regardless of brand, I generally stick to 4x except when testing for this reason.
– Gough
Some disc quality scans after boiling various M-Discs – http://yss.la.coocan.jp/mdisc/mdisc_top.htm
Gough,
Just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for this. I have a dear friend with approx. 3 months to live, and his requested contribution from me was to help him with archiving his family photos and videos. The work and information you have provided here have allowed me to perform this task with confidence, and I am endlessly grateful.
The MKM/Verbatim media test document referrers to the media as “Archive BD-R DL and TL”.
I am not sure that this is the same as the MKM/Verbatim discs sold on amazon [Link Removed] with a “normal” price.
I found that MKM/Verbatim released a kind of media called “Enterprise grade BD-R for archive” here is the link: http://www.mcmedia.co.jp/enterprise/index_e.html
I don’t think these are the same and the test document might be related to the Enterprise grade and not the consumer one.
Thanks for that informative link.
Based on the information on the link, the consumer stuff isn’t the same as such, but strangely, the supplied test results (which are fairly small) shows that the RSER/Burst error counts of both types of disc are fairly low despite the difference. While the archive disc achieves a 10^-5 error, the MKM standard sample achieves 10^-4. This is a 10-fold difference in error, but these are mostly corrected by the first layer of error correction. The first graph, for example, shows that an RSER of 10^-3 is the “limit” of tolerance. The longer burst errors which require another layer of error correction are much closer in magnitude – about a peak of 400 for the archive disc, and 550 for the regular. In light of their own information, I wouldn’t feel bad about that, as the burn quality difference between even the same brand but different batch of discs burnt at different speeds can vary by as much – and a single speck of dust on the data side layer during burning could cause quite a lot more errors to be “burnt in” due to the shadowing effect.
Of course, this second graph that does the comparison only considers the initial results post-burn and ageing isn’t clearly shown. The first graph gives a spread of probability which would imply that normal products have a shorter storage period and wider variability – but it seems this graph is not backed by any data at all, with no information on methodology and no comparison made directly of degradation trend of regular versus “enterprise grade” and its axes are unlabelled! I would take this as just “illustrative” but not exactly anything more than a “marketing diagram” – it may well be that the different in storage period is less than depicted as degradation rates are non-linear. A difference in error rate of 10-fold does not automatically mean a 10-fold lifetime increase as errors typically stay stable throughout the disc’s lifetime, only sharply increasing towards the end (at least, in my experience).
Specifically, note that the article itself has dates of 2012 for the release of the products. This predates the claimed release date of M-Disc which was planned to be launched Q2 of 2013 (http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/optical/millenniata-blu-ray-m-disc/) but probably didn’t launch until later as most of the reviews date to 2015. This suggests to me that MKM’s formulation is independent of M-Disc’s “own” technology and achieves a similar level of lifetime, which implies to me that the material is likely to be very similar for the BD-Rs – archive or not, from vendors other than M-Disc.
In fact, the difference could be related to the fact that under the notes section, point 3 is “The recording characteristics of our professional archive discs are optimized for Pioneer’s professional BD drive, BDR-PR1/BDR-PR1M. Accordingly, no guarantee of recording quality or correct operation can be given when using drives other than BDR-PR1/BDR-PR1M.” The difference in performance could be due to the use of a different recorder, or a recorder with less-than-optimal write strategy.
The comment posting by “mtrash” on http://www.pcworld.com/article/2933478/storage/m-disc-optical-media-reviewed-your-data-good-for-a-thousand-years.html seems to support the hypothesis that the material is very similar.
At the end of the day, I don’t really have any alliances with any company – M-Disc, MKM or otherwise. Their success or failure is really immaterial to me. What I’m interested is the most cost-effective solution from a lifecycle basis, including time and energy, to archive data with a given level of reliability and longevity. I have found that BD-R no longer meets these needs due to the skyrocketing need for greater storage, and because the physical construction of the disc (with only 0.1mm polycarbonate overcoat over the data layer) is vulnerable to damage from something as simple as resting against a patterned storage sleeve (http://goughlui.com/2015/04/13/warning-dont-store-blu-ray-discs-in-sleeves-heat-gun-revival-technique/). Mea culpa, I suppose, although earlier Ritek media (http://goughlui.com/legacy/stateofbdr/index.htm) also failed quite demonstrably as well which is why I had to investigate storage behaviour in the first place. Every other vendor of disc I have tried has not faulted (at least, not so spectacularly) … but given earlier M-Discs were made by Ritek, you could probably tell why I was somewhat reticent to try it out.
– Gough
What do you suggest for long term storage if BD-R does not meet your standards?
TIA
Dear Gough,
You mention how the LTH blu-rays have poor longevity. I have been using the triple layer 100GB BDXL’s from Verbatim, but I can’t tell whether they are LTH or HTL. Do you know of a way for me to tell what kind they are?
Also, does Verbatim’s “hard coat” protect against humidity?
Thanks,
Ben
You said it yourself in the post ” the archival performance of these discs were proven by US Military Department of Defense testing”, this is what makes me have doubts about your findings.
Please read the article again, because obviously, you have a problem with reading:
This article is taking about their Verbatim M-Disc BD-R, of which NO SUCH proof of testing is available. Only the older M-Disc DVD products had military testing, and obvious differences, namely a dye-less recording layer made with inorganic material.
Next time, read more than just a sentence please.
– Gough
[these below from wikipedia]
Standard (HTL) BD-R and BD-R/DL (except LTH BD-R[13]) typically use inorganic data layers, but continue using a reflective layer. M-DISC BD-R has no reflective layer
At first in DVD and Blu-ray M-Discs there was difficulty distinguishing the writable side of the disc, so they added color to distinguish the sides and make it look like the coloring on standard DVD or Blu-ray media.
I’m not too sure about the truth of that, especially seeing as the company has been quite loose with its words and descriptions of its technology and a lack of cited technical evidence. At least in the DVDs, the writeable side is a shiny silver-grey colour, the top side has a bit of a grey-green tint to it. The BD-Rs however look much the same in colouration as regular BD-Rs of the bronze-colour on the data side. I suspect there is a reflective layer, but I can’t be sure. Scraping away the printable layer on the top of my M-Disc BD-R reveals a silver surface (under the polycarbonate) which appears to be a conventional reflective layer with a fairly high reflectivity. I don’t have access to a gas chromatograph to determine the chemical composition, however, I really don’t think the M-Disc BD-R utilizes the same technology in their DVDs which have been tested and proven.
A quick picture:
It doesn’t prove much – but at least it looks much more reflective and less “translucent” compared to the original M-Disc DVD’s “lack of reflective layer” exhibited – you could literally see fingers through it. Here, you can’t even see the text in the jewel case.
For my own curiosity, I have destroyed a disc by slicing a cut through the data layer overcoat. I will leave it for a few weeks and see what happens. Traditional aluminium based reflective layers oxidise – similar to what happened to my TDK BD-Rs with poor edge seals here:
If the layer oxidises – that’s proof of an aluminium based reflective layer … and if it doesn’t, maybe it is indeed different. Ultimately, I lose a disc, but I really have nothing to gain or lose whether the technology is real or not …
– Gough
Well, I didn’t forget about this, but sadly the results are still inconclusive. Despite slitting the overcoat right through and seeing a little delamination, no oxidation occured on the M-Disc and the control CMC Magnetics disc. Both discs suffered slight delamination, but neither had their reflective layer oxidise yet. I’ll leave it for longer, but Australia’s mostly dry winter climate at the moment probably doesn’t help.
– Gough
you said in part: “slicing a cut through the data layer overcoat”
now, bd-r data layer is on the bottom (write) side 1/10th of a mm below the surface. reflective layer would be on the TOP side most likely. so, cut thru both sides or at the edge and see…
my verbatim bd-r 25gb definitely have a absolutely cd-r like, mirror like reflective layer on the top (non data-writable) side.
Wow, that’s quite a helpful post. Thanks for doing all that testing and research. Do you have any info on Verbatim’s DataLifePlus BD-Rs, in terms of what their projected lifespan is, and what kind of recordable layer they use? I’ve been trying to find this out for days and days and can’t. On Amazon, people insist that it uses dyes, but I thought that all HTL media, (which I assume these are) uses inorganic materials these days?
Also, in your post above, it says that Verbatim BD-R DL is shown to have a similar lifespan to M-Disks. Does that also apply to Verbatim’s single layer BD-R?
If you could shed some light on all this, I’d much appreciate it.
in this thread, it shows evidence that all bd-r media use inorganic data layers, IE similar to m-disc dvds, so not subject to nearly as much light exposure degradation. i havent seen any actual tests other than the verbatims in this thread though! also, up to beginning of this year when i checked this thread, m-discs appear to have never tested their own bd-r, and in fact show ONLY 3rd party dvd media tests publicly!
The only real thing I can think the M-DISC might do a better job of is keeping a clear distinction between the reflective and diffuse state of the inorganic layer. This would lead it to potentially retain more readability when the hard coating wears (a hardness test on the normal BluRay vs M-DISC would also help with this).
However, it might also just be a way to keep the currently existing production lines that the M-DISC DVDs used alive and kicking, which to me sounds like the most probable scenario (for monetary reasons most likely).
Excellent article. I have been desperate to learn the real story behind M-DISC vs any other typical Bluray. And through your article was helpful in rasing excellent debate ponts either way, I consider this following M-DISC test by a person in the U.K. to be of enough value (to me personally) to justify M-DISC as a worthy, tried-and-true archival bluray solution.
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artsep16/mol-mdisc-review.html
That article is missing some information. First off I’d like to see both sides of both desks, second off the last picture he shows before he says I’m going to now play the restored disk, is the magic marker side of the tdk non mdisc desk. It’s not always possible to trust an article like this, it is also possible for a post like this To be fabricated. Already suspicious is this is a commercial website selling a particular Blu-ray drive Every issue including the existence or not of a so-called reflective later has been covered in this thread. The only thing that article does to add is a test which shows a couple of incomplete photos.
Furthermore, the ‘ordinary’ blu-ray disc (the blue TDK-disc on the photo) may be a LTH blu-ray disc instead of an inorganic HTL blu-ray disc.
That is very very very unlikely.
The LTH variant of BD-R is very easy to spot – just look at the underside. All LTH discs are light-golden coloured. Anything that’s a chocolatey-dark-brown or a grey-blue is a regular BD-R. In fact, I’ve never met an LTH BD-R that is sold without clearly indicating that it is an LTH disc. This is because LTH discs are not directly interchangeable with BD-Rs as non LTH capable burners cannot burn them, and likewise, regular BD-ROM drives prior to the introduction of LTH discs cannot read them. They are in fact, an extremely uncommon and difficult to find variant, despite initially promising to be cheaper. Fears that discs are “LTH in disguise” are an unfounded fear that is almost entirely unjustified and I have no idea where people come up with this idea.
However, there is another way to find out for sure – just insert the disc into any BD-R writer and query the media code and look that up online or in the drive firmware (if it can be extracted). Otherwise, you can look at the Imgburn listing and it will tell you the type – either HTL or LTH. Regardless of type, I have had horrific experiences with early Ritek discs (before LTH was even invented), so while LTH is known to be problematic in the long run, HTL discs are not always a guarantee especially if they are the cheaper variety or improperly stored.
Regardless, I don’t see much in the way of continuing to advocate for optical storage when other forms of more reliable storage are similar or cheaper in price and require less time investment. It’s probably good for a backup or if it must play in a standalone player, but otherwise, BD technology is not likely to see much of demand even with the newer BD-XL triple and quadruple layer variants.
– Gough
O thank you, the things you told about LTH/HTL discs were very helpful. I did not know that.
Could you please give your recommendations for alternative long term storage media? I greatly appreciate your research and sharing this information, as I was about to move forward with quite a large scale archive project with these discs.
I wanted to write a more long-winded post regarding archival, but put simply, to think of archival as being solved through the use of long term media is ultimately like putting all of one’s eggs in a basket. The answer is that for anything to “survive” a long time requires care and attention throughout to maintain the integrity and longevity of the data.
This means a number of things (amongst others I may have left out):
– Carefully curated file formats – proprietary formats may not last the test of time.
– Integrity protection at the data level – best to have no ambiguity about file validity (in case of silent bit rot) plus the potential to recover from data errors (e.g. PAR files, recovery volumes).
– Protection of the user environment – where some file formats need given software, preservation of that software and the system it operates on is perhaps equally as important. This might include storing hardware (e.g. drives, computers). At this stage, DRM poses a risk to this, as it may not permit stored software to continue functioning into the future.
– Diversity in media – ideally you choose various different types of media and perhaps even different brands. Given current costs/trends, having several external/internal hard drives with several copies is likely to be quicker and more cost-effective and may even be more reliable for the term of the archive. You may still use M-Disc, but in my opinion, it may be harder to find a working Blu-Ray drive in the future (given their unpopularity) versus a USB or SATA port. Hard drives are generally designed for 3-5 year lifetimes, most of my drives in cold store easily surpass 10 years and some have made it to 20 although a bit shaky there. Flash media is generally to be avoided as their retention is generally anywhere from 2 years (design) to 10 years (warranted). Depending on what you are archiving, film formats (e.g. microfiche) and paper can last a very long time given the right handling and storage.
– Diversity in storage – different storage conditions can make a lot of difference to the lifetime of the storage media.
– Custody in storage – someone needs to take care of the archive once it’s made. I’m an advocate of doing a refresh on the data every 2-3 years – this includes integrity verification of the data, converting to more modern file formats if the old format is at risk (without destroying the original – conversions often lose fidelity), copying to brand new media and storing old and new copies. This reduces the risk of issues – e.g. file format won’t open with modern software, silent failure of all the media has gone undetected. It also increases the archive’s strength by adding more duplicates to the pool, but should be increasingly cheaper to do as time goes along and storage prices reduce.
Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a “set and forget” strategy to archiving, I don’t think that is ever going to avoid all of these pitfalls. It is probably what results in me receiving Syquest cartridges from the early 90’s, written by long-dead Mac System 6 or 7 systems, with projects made in Macromedia Director (long defunct) … https://goughlui.com/2016/07/09/syquest-ered-two-44mb-cartridges-stacked-with-directors-projectors/ and others that have come to me with a MS-DOS compatible format, compressed in Doublespace (a patent encumbered format that Microsoft were forced to remove from MS-DOS) … https://goughlui.com/2016/12/08/recovery-musical-syquest-cartridges-with-doublespace-compression/
There are successes, but they are much hard won – I wouldn’t expect any data recovery shop nowadays to have the equipment to even read the disc, let alone interpret the filesystem, file formats and convert it into something usable. Of note is that Syquest cartridges are /removable/ hard drives of relatively moderate popularity in the graphic arts community (prior to the Iomega ZIP), but even that didn’t guarantee the format’s (or company’s) survival. The discs themselves survived a long time by comparison – but I also had discs that arrived with mold on the surface that both damaged the heads of a drive and failed to be read out.
– Gough
Hey Gough, did you even discover the results of the BD-R splitting test and whether they use a reflective layer or not?
Also on another note, do you have any updates regarding any of your earliest bd-r burns, the old panasonic or cmc ones, please share if you can
Unfortunately, this is not something I can really give an answer to. Due to a family situation, I had moved house and in the process, a lot of things were disposed of and/or lost owing to the logistics.
Unfortunately, as I had already lost faith in the reliability of BD-Rs in general, the sleeve storage was causing notable impacts on the reliability of the media, and the limited access speed was driving me nuts – all the data had been migrated to hard drives and most of the media was destroyed and disposed of. Some samples were kept in a spindle somewhere, but I can’t remember where exactly. It is unfortunately, not to hand (although the hard drive copies of the data are, and have survived without any issue).
– Gough
I have few questions to hdd archival:
Aren’t you affraid of: Spin-motor bearings seizing and head “stiction” to platters ?
Or revisiting hdd in 5 years span is good enought to aleviate those hdd problems ? One disk might survive 5 years but other not so it is hard to say what period is ok and thus next question:
How many copies you’re using to backup on hdd because 2 is not enought in my opinion because 2 disks can fail in period of 5 years ?
regards,
Robert
Generally speaking, no. My recent experience generally finds that FDB motors are highly reliable and don’t seem to have bearing issues in the same way that older ball bearing motors did. Even then, I’ve had mostly no permanent issues with ball bearing motors either. Stiction is not an issue either as most drives after 500GB use ramp load and unload technology. Contact-start-stop is an old technology and now stiction usually occurs if the heads somehow come to rest on the disk (i.e. emergency park has failed) which is usually indicative of bigger issues (e.g. power supply instability) but can be remedied either with a firm smack or a careful disassembly and twist of the spindle motor with a screwdriver.
Oddly enough, with older drives, I usually find physical elements break down (e.g. rubber stops turn into sticky goo, other parts start outgassing and contaminating the chamber including the platters and heads) or the mechanics have somehow started to change enough that the drive just cannot perform anymore (e.g. head geometry has worn out, suspension is mis-shapen, alignment of one or more of the multiple heads on the arm is lost, head somehow doesn’t read a good signal). Usually failure is relatively sudden, but the drive otherwise performs well up to that point.
The design life of a drive is about five years – but that doesn’t mean you write data to the drive and then leave it for five years!. That would be an absolutely silly thing to do. It just means that the drive is designed to work reliably for five years – any more is not “on purpose”. You will need two copies as a minimum because failure is always an option – but some people (myself included) can get lucky. It all depends how valuable the data is for you – if it’s extremely valuable, a diversified approach is best where you use different types of drives, different media, different recorders, different storage conditions. The latter is often overlooked – if you store a hard drive outside in a garage, let it get tipped over or dropped onto the ground, then it’s just about useless. That being said, I have (and have serviced computers containing) quite a few drives exceeding 10 years now … it seems long and hard read/write operations have a greater toll on drive life, as I’ve unpacked some “archive” 60GB IDE drives just three years ago that had <4000 hours on them and they came up just fine and served a further 24,000 hours as a server boot drive before I decommissioned them for power saving/performance reasons.
My recommendation is to keep your archives as living entities - i.e. make sure you have integrity protection (e.g. checksum, parity), revisit them every year to see that they're still working and accurate, monitor the SMART data from the drive to know what its internal status looks like and retire drives that are unhealthy immediately, copy them every two or so years to newer drives (and/or consolidate multiple smaller drives into one larger drive) thus increasing the number of copies in existence and potentially upgrading the interface (e.g. IDE -> SATA), convert any proprietary file formats that are getting unusable, securely erase and retire drives only when you physically can’t store them anymore. If you can, try and ensure that you have a means of accessing them that will not cause them to become damaged or altered (i.e. a write-blocker).
By keeping them as “living” entities, you can catch silent bit rot or drive failures early, increase the number of copies over time as storage becomes larger and cheaper-per-GB, save time (as larger drives are usually faster, meaning future copies are faster), avoid a situation where you have files that cannot be opened by new versions of software and have a chance to dispose of unnecessary data as well.
Conversely – optical is not without its benefits and issues. Interchangeability is great – it decouples the media from the drive. But this can also lead to greater vulnerability to storage and handling conditions. The speed and data density is not great (if you have large volumes of data, it’s becoming hard to use). Cost may be an issue too. But perhaps the biggest issue I see is the lack of continuing optical drive manufacturers and the likelihood that the last few manufacturers may stop making them entirely. That would leave us in the same situation where VHS and Compact Cassette machines are today – no new stock, the last made units are mostly low-quality and flimsy, the remaining units may fail with no spare parts to repair. Once they are gone, you won’t have any access to the media even if it’s still alive. I personally have run into this issue with formats like Video8 and MiniDV where decks are now relatively expensive and hard to get, and conversion services don’t always do a good job or charge exorbitant fees. We can see similar things happening in the optical drive market – there are very few models left to choose from …
Others swear by enterprise-grade LTO tape as a way to bridge this gap. While the tape technology is robust, drive availability and cost, along with the supporting interface hardware (some are SCSI/SAS) can be an issue as well. The lack of speedy random access and the need to ensure the drive is ‘fed’ at a certain rate to avoid backhitching is another limitation.
Rarely does one solution fit everyone’s need – I encourage everyone to consider their needs and the relative merits of each approach. Specifically, I think an overemphasis on media alone is unhealthy – there is an ecosystem that needs to be considered for successful long-term archival – e.g. the storage, the drive, the data interface, the filesystem format support, the file format support, integrity management, migration strategy, etc.
– Gough
Thanks for answer !
Not much trust in hdd i see but factually hdd are not meant to be backup medium so year is good period for checking if it is working.
Buying new drive after 2 years and also second drive as backup will makes it very costly as 20 years will cost 20 x hdd if we have 2 copy setup.
Also there is not much to choose as for different media beside hdds because ssd are big unknown for backup and bluray is something that You reviewed used and dropped because
of very unusual problems with storage (sleeves and hot air ) or you returned to storage on bluray ?
Also do you have any good brand bluray single layer disk which is rotten from years you used them to backup ? It will be very helpful to asses
lifespan of bluray :).In 2015 in comment you’ve said that TDK is good: https://goughlui.com/2014/12/24/warning-dont-stack-blank-bd-r-dl-discs-in-sleeves/
It makes mm wonder what is the purpose of bluray recordable because it isn’t archival of course because of fragility so for who they manufacture it ?
Official site of bluray http://www.blu-raydisc.com is only available on webarchive so it can’t be future medium 🙁 as no one care.
Generally speaking there is no backup medium designed to personal data and this is the problem. There are only ways to use media like hdd in backupy way which is not ideal but it seams
only option available for volumes like several TB of data 🙁
My backup is mainly on dvds and i didn’t found any broken dvd which span to 15 years old maybe because they are better than bluray i think because dye is equally between plastic which makes DVD
so they are scrath resistant and doesn’t react that bad to sleeves. Only problem is low space 4.7G but they are nearest the idea of “set it and forget it” and
going to hdds it will be much worse as you say because it will need so much more work to maintain this data. If they stop manufacturing dvd readers
I will be forced to go to hdds 🙁 or have 10 dvd reader and wait till 2 lasts die 🙂
On the other hand professional backup is very expensive but gives promises that lasts 30 years but i don’t think it is cheaper than hdds backup but maybe more like “set it and forget it”
although continuous evolution means also busy backup 🙁 so unfortunately, there isn’t much to choose from at least in the digital realm.
regards,
Robert
Well, one does not have to buy a new drive every two years – I usually do it for the first time as two copies is not many in the grand scheme of things. From there-on, usually I verify the copies, and after a few years, I might even copy from one drive to another to “refresh” the recording but not necessarily buy a new drive. When I do, usually it is because the drives get larger and cheaper per GB over time, the fact I can consolidate drives together saves me physical space, the faster speed saves time and there is the (potentially) better reliability. The old drives never get thrown out straight away.
I’ve dropped BluRay for a very long time now. I don’t have the patience to burn discs at 4x or 8x to maintain quality when my archives are >32TB in size which would be >1280 BD-R SL discs already. It just isn’t practical or cost effective for me – I have run into problems and migrated all of my library of BD-R away to HDDs with no known faults since although one HDD did develop a few sector weaknesses that were identified and copied to another drive before it got any worse – I have never had to rely on the second copy (yet).
Part of this is because I don’t just “use” a brand new drive, flash card or optical disc. I always take the time to run full-surface commissioning tests first to exercise the drive and verify its capabilities, looking at any diagnostic data which is available. This has on three occasions caused me to reject a hard drive, and five occasions to reject a flash card prior to use as it failed in some way during this test and cannot be trusted. After this, I still “scrub” my drives periodically (once every year or two years) by reading the whole surface to identify any “pending” sectors (i.e. data which is weak or lost but was not identified because of a lack of attempt to access). Watching the SMART data (for spinning drives) has been very helpful in early migration to avoid failures.
In the end, there is no archive that is truly set-and-forget … at least, not for the volume of data you might be interested in storing nowadays.
– Gough
For what it’s worth, there is a press release that talks specifically about the longevity of the MKM 100GB M-DISC: https://www.verbatim.com/includes/binary_details.php3?id=3380
The interesting part is that it is not copying the same text that every website seems to copy about the M-DISC repeating the “Accelerated Life Cycle Comparison of Millenniata Archival DVD” report from the Naval Air Warfare Center (https://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf).
From the press release:
“The 100GB BD M-DISC has been tested by MKM, Millenniata and 3rd parties according to the internationally-accepted lifetime testing standard ISO/IEC 16963 2nd ed. The outcome is a remarkable average lifetime of significantly more than 2,000 years with no more than 1 failure per 100,000 discs expected, after more than 1,000 years at 25C (77F) and 50% relative humidity. In other words, data can be reliably stored for centuries on the 100 GB BD M-DISCTM in a typical home or office closet.”
Granted it is not a truly independent 3rd party testing report such as the Naval Air Warfare Center, but if the numbers that they’re claiming are anything close to real, it’s remarkable longevity of a consumer product available everywhere now for data storage.
From my own usage of the Made in Japan Verbatim 100GB M-DISC with manufacturer ID “VERBAT,IMk”, it seems extremely sensitive to smudges and fingerprints. The disc needs a smudge free surface to read fully without errors. No information to add about longevity as I haven’t had these discs long enough. I’m using the slimline external Verbatim writer, which is actually a “PIONEER BD-RW BDR-UD03 1.11”.
So you didn’t really even do any actual longevity tests. You burned a disc is all and then speculated based on cobbled together information you dug up from all over. At least with one guy I saw he left his M-Disc outside in the sun and rain and snow for a year and it was totally fine. Where as the normal BD-R was completely destroyed and ruined. Also above I see the guys comment shows a current test that says the BDR M-Disc last 2000 years.
It’s possible they burn longer and deeper (or at least slightly different), if that is the case then that could make all the difference in the world. Also you have no idea what the actual materials are. Even slight changes can make a world of difference or even changes in how they are created at the factory. Things that cost more money and take longer. The same way you might have the same paint on a car be 4 times more durable depending on how it’s applied and how long it’s allowed to dry or the exact chemical make up. Or how the same metal can be twice as strong when it’s put through extra hammering or slightly different ingredients. There is a LOT of proof in the world where a product can be twice as strong or more but nobody does it because the cost is too high. But sometimes there is a niche market for it at that cost so one company will do it but have to charge more.
The fact it you don’t know any of what is put into an M-Disc. And you haven’t done any real tests yourself. You’re purely speculating. People seem very happy with M-Disc though and they all have very positive reviews and tests for what test have been done by individuals and what tests have been done since you posted this so long ago. Where as I see plenty of negative reviews on most all other BDR discs. It seems there is a way higher percentage of happy people archiving with M-disc.
It seems you got it in your mind how you want to feel about them and you don’t want to accept any other possibility. And then you get mad at anyone who says otherwise. You need to actually prove your theory before making claims and calling it truth. At least when a company makes a claim they risk getting sued. So they don’t make claims so lightly regardless of what little info they might provide on what actually goes into making them.
From the Mdisc site:
“With our new 25 GB Blu-ray M-Disc, you can now archive more easily with a larger capacity disc that is more widely compatible with drives in the market. Our new Blu-ray is based on the same 1,000 year standard for longevity”
While I appreciate you looking into it I really don’t like how you went about it or how you came to a conclusion. I think you need to do way more actual testing and somehow find out more info, or just leave it as “I can’t be sure and don’t know without more testing or information”.
Dear User-56,
Thanks for your comment on what is now a six-year-old post. I do not disagree with what you have said, but I feel you may have read into the post more than what was intended.
I did not have the necessary equipment to determine the material properties of the disc. I do not dispute that the disc could be different in materials and did not seek to perform any “makeshift” accelerated life tests (ALT) as such testing is not necessarily representative of failure modes which may actually manifest. The ALT methodology really only applies to factors which affect the disc in a known and predictable way and thus have known acceleration factors attached to them. At the time I posted the article, I was not aware of such experiments, which some others had provided follow-up comments on which show below the article.
The only information at the time indicated that statistically, their own accelerated life tests showed similar archival lifetimes to other archival BD-R media. Because of this, at the time, I could not conclude that the M-Disc is substantially different from other quality archival BD-R media based on their claimed accelerated life testing data which they use in their advertising. But I did not conclude that they were the same – I was making it clear that their claims as published at the time the article was written were not entirely unique to M-Disc products only. This includes the fact that BD-Rs, with the exception of LTH media, all use inorganic recording layers and appear visually similar. If I had to make a wild guess, perhaps they substituted the reflective layer with their own material instead, as that may be the next most vulnerable component. If the new information gives them an even longer lifetime, that’s great news for all.
I performed the only testing that can be done on a reasonable time-scale given my equipment – that is, evaluating initial burn quality as this is amongst the most important parameters for ensuring a long-lived disc. One which is poorly burned from the outset has less error-correction margin to failure and given similar material degradation rates, can be assumed to fail more rapidly. The reason this was of interest is that at-the-time, reported burn curves on CDFreaks/myCE showed variable quality in media batches which were not particularly inspiring for a disc of this price calibre, data mainly of interest to optical media enthusiasts.
If people are archiving with M-Disc and finding the experience positive, then that is excellent anecdotal evidence. It is never my intention to discourage them from using M-Disc – I’m passionate about good archival strategy and preservation of data and interchangeable media definitely has its advantages. It was merely to advocate for caution around claims without any publicly-available statistically significant evidence. Nowadays, however, BD-R is mostly moot as one has to seriously consider the cost, time investment and media obsolescence issues. I was an M-Disc DVD+R user and I wanted to rely on the BD-R as well, but the evidence was not enough to convince me of its properties at the time thus I stuck with the DVD+R while it was still available. That decision was not one that I regretted, although it did come with greater cost, time and space requirements.
– Gough
I’ve been burning CDs since 1996, DVD-Rs since around 2004 and BD-Rs since 2011 and I can’t share the theses and assumptions that can be read here. In doing so, I only ever rely on practical tests and what test programs such as “Opti Drive Control” have confirmed to me even after several years. To test the long-term archiving, a few years ago, shortly after the release, I exposed both the Verbatim HTL disc (with the MABL logo on the packaging) and the MDisc to various outdoor weather conditions, i.e. sun, wind, rain and snow and that for several months. Ultimately, the MDisc was the only one where the data could still be read at the end. Even the Verbatim HTL disc, which is high quality compared to other manufacturers, couldn’t keep up, even though it is one of the most reliable things I know of, alongside the MDisc.
I use both media types for different purposes: The MABL discs (HTL) for backing up data that is not quite as important as purchased music or dumped audio CDs in FLAC format and the MDisc for video recordings from my own production, which mean a lot to me. I’ve only ever burned with Pioneer burners (currently a BDR-212EBK), since they undoubtedly offer the best burning quality, which is also proven by my subsequent quality scans with “Opti Drive Control”. Under normal storage conditions I have not had any failures, neither during firing nor during storage. The normal HTL discs were usually burned at 4x speed, the MDisc always at 2x speed, but this doesn’t make a big difference.
Unfortunately, Verbatim stopped producing the MDisc for cost reasons and is currently trying to deceive buyers with ordinary HTL discs that have the same Disc ID as the MABL discs mentioned above. There is no indication on the packaging, nor have the burning speeds been adjusted. Only after unpacking and reading in with “Imgburn” do you realize that these “new MDiscs” are in fact Verbatim HTL or MABL discs with a different label, which also have exactly the same color and coating. Verbatim speaks of a “further development” here, which I strongly doubt and consider a real indictment for such a renowned manufacturer. There has already been a detailed Reddit post on this, as well as articles from well-known German IT magazines such as CT (Heise), Golem or HardwareLUXX.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/111q0vh/verbatim_has_been_marketing_cheaper_bluray_blanks/
https://www.heise.de/news/Langzeitarchivierung-Verwirrung-um-die-M-Disc-7349953.html
https://www.golem.de/news/betrugsvorwuerfe-verbatim-erklaert-verwirrung-um-m-discs-2211-170039.html
https://www.hardwareluxx.de/index.php/news/consumer-electronics/gadgets/59956-verbatim-neue-m-discs-verwirren-user-und-sorgen-f%C3%BCr-unbegr%C3%BCndeten-shitstorm-auf-reddit.html
Today I had to send back these “Fake MDiscs” for the third time and there have already been allegations of fraud with threats of class action lawsuits in various places. Unfortunately, Amazon has not yet reacted to the description of the situation, so that one is now forced to either do without the (much more expensive) MDisc or to go back to the usual HTL discs. Since both types have the same disc ID and color scheme, this can actually only be described as money-making and attempted fraud. Ultimately, however, there is still no alternative to Verbatim BD-R’s, at least not if you focus on longevity. The manufacturer knows this and is trying to capitalize on this with its new strategy – to the advantage of its own sales and to the detriment of loyal customers. And that’s not a good prospect.
Thanks for the update – good to hear that your testing found differences in favour of M-Disc, but not so good to hear regular HTL discs being sold as M-Disc now given that fact.
I’ve long given up on optical media for a multiplicity of reasons, so I don’t have much in the way to contribute to such discussions, but thanks for taking the time to write such a long and detailed update.
– Gough
P.S. Comments are manually moderated through – there is no need to resubmit your comments.
Are you sure MABL isn’t a good archival option at all? Just because MABL HTL BDs can’t survive the same torture testing as MDisk BDs (or is it DVDs you tested?) doesn’t mean that MABL isn’t a good archival storage medium when left alone in good conditions. MABL is advertised a lasting up to 100 years or more, so as long as one cares for MABL disks properly, they should last a long time.
Why not still use MABL as archival storage though, since they’re still advertised as lasting a 100 years or more by Verbatim? Sure, they’re not as durable under torture testing & harsh conditions as MDisk BDs (or is it DVDs you compared the MABLs to?), but that doesn’t mean MABL BDs aren’t still really durable when stored under normally careful conditions, like you would other types of optical disks?
You guys are all dorks! Does this really need to be that complicated? How about a few more graphs and some pi charts! See what I did there?
The girl gets around!