It's gonna be hard to find archival media better and cheaper than Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD+R. You can get 50 discs for under $16 - that's about 6.7 cents/GB. Flash-based media never quite seems to match that price, and flash degrades unless you keep it in the freezer or something. Hard drives can best that price, but how well do they archive over years or decades?
Granted, DVDs in general supposedly degrade over decades too. So is flash-in-the-freezer the best solution now?
Well with flash you more or less only have to worry about leakage, which would take years (decade scale). You could always just keep an extra copy on another drive (or 3), check the hashes every couple of years and then rewrite with known good data. You'd run into compatibility issues of either the drive or the data itself before you ever had wear issues. That said, I imagine you could achieve solid results by just storing archival-grade optical media under Ar and protected from light, but most people don't really have access to a glovebox (and well that T tanks may be cheap individually, they really add up over the years). So yeah...multiple flash drives would be the way to go.
That was actually a thing back in the Usenet days (when you weren't sure if every piece of a large file would make it to everyone). You'd break the file into, say, 30 pieces, then add 10 parity pieces. As long as people got at least 30 of the 40, they could recreate the original file.
I used to do it with my photo archive backups to CD-R / DVD-R, so a disc or two dying of bit rot wouldn't cause irrecoverable data loss. Just substitute another disc with parity info and I could recover the original disc contents.
I just wish the prices of them would drop. Guess there's just not mass purchases of BD media to get that price lowered. Hell, I don't personally know anyone that even has a BD drive in their comp and I'm a Windows system administrator. It's like no one cares to backup anything.
I've just got a couple 50 disc spindles of BD-DL media, but past that, the price increases significantly.
Even if you choose another route, for really important data, optical media is a cheap extra that's pretty easy to maintain. You could easily and cheaply write the data from other sources onto fresh discs every decade or two.
"and flash degrades unless you keep it in the freezer or some"
So does DVD, as I've (and no doubt others) found out after moving my optically stored stuff to hdds after about a decade of them sitting in a box. Not much, but even Verbatim had some degraded / at least partialla unreadable discs.
Ah. Back in the day when being an optical-nerd was a thing and Taiyo Yuden verbatims (both cd and dvd) was the best you could ever get! There where dedicated webshops selling high end cd/dvd recordable media and Taiyo Yuden was always the highest rated and most expensive). I still having some unused 8x Taiyo Yuden verbatim DVD+R (or was it DVD-R, I don't remember)'s lying around somewhere I think. I still use and buy verbatim optical if I need it.
Taiyo Yuden was the popular choice at computer shows back in the 90's and they never did me wrong. Wide compatibility with game consoles of the era and pre-CD-R compliant car audio decks was icing on the cake.
CMC sells what is supposedly Taiyo Yuden discs now, as they bought the technology from TY. From what I've heard, they did move manufacturing from Taiwan to China, but still utilize the same technology and quality. I just bought a spindle of 100 CD-Rs, they seem to be working great in my 3DO so far.
It might degrade gradually, but I've never had good quality optical media become unreadable. The oldest CD-Rs I have are 20+ years. It might also depend on storage and environmental conditions, and on writer/write quality. Also the reader is part of the equation; some drives aren't as good. In particular I suspect laptop drives.
I wish they'd fix that because I usually disable Javascript for performance and safety reasons. Anandtech is a hideously slow site on mobile with Javascript turned on. I suppose they could learn how to build a proper website and that could also address some of the problem (not the ads though - Anandtech without an adblocker is one of the worst sites I see on a regular basis).
So Blu-Ray is the last optical media standard for consumers, while there might be other technologies for the private sector, there's almost no need to develop another standard, maybe just developing or improving the current BR discs more like the UHD 4K (HDR) (which are just a capacity bump versions with more layers, the software on another hand is different as it goes for higher compression HEVC which supports higher resolution contents as well, making original BR players incompatible with UHD BR discs)
I might be old fasioned but I keep 2x2TB 3.5 HDD's raided for that purpose, and online google backup. 10 years now I think, those drives never failed me, now I also keep 2x8TB for fresher things. Always raid if you care for data.
Sorry to lose Verbatim --- this is a great loss to reliable offsite backup media.
I have hundreds of Verbatim DVD+R and +RW dating back to the mid/late 1990s. Many CD-R disks of various brands back 28(?) years. Many BluRay BD-RE and BD-R (Panasonic media) for the last decade. Very very few have failed ... (mostly re-writable media that was re-written).
CMC media was always junk going way back. Some of their cd-rom media survives (I must admit)
China? No way this will be the same. Just purchasing the technology does not mean it gets used. Made in Japan media Panasonic and Verbatim media was reliable.
Very few companies embrace quality after decades of being willing to sell junk.
My question --- Is there any media still made in Japan?
I have around 1600 BDXL discs burned and stored away in 320-disc capacity disc binders, neatly tucked into my bookshelf. More than 160 terabytes!
Most are standard 100GB Verbatim/Mitshibishi HTL (MABL) discs I got off eBay from Japan. They are the cheapest option I have found that is still suitable for my needs. Some are the more expensive, and supposedly longer lasting, 100GB M-Disc. also by Verbatim. Lastly, I have some 128GB Sony discs which I have taken from some Generation 1 Sony 1.5TB Optical Disc Archive cartridges.
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Ken_g6 - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
It's gonna be hard to find archival media better and cheaper than Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD+R. You can get 50 discs for under $16 - that's about 6.7 cents/GB. Flash-based media never quite seems to match that price, and flash degrades unless you keep it in the freezer or something. Hard drives can best that price, but how well do they archive over years or decades?Granted, DVDs in general supposedly degrade over decades too. So is flash-in-the-freezer the best solution now?
nismotigerwvu - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
Well with flash you more or less only have to worry about leakage, which would take years (decade scale). You could always just keep an extra copy on another drive (or 3), check the hashes every couple of years and then rewrite with known good data. You'd run into compatibility issues of either the drive or the data itself before you ever had wear issues. That said, I imagine you could achieve solid results by just storing archival-grade optical media under Ar and protected from light, but most people don't really have access to a glovebox (and well that T tanks may be cheap individually, they really add up over the years). So yeah...multiple flash drives would be the way to go.Maltz - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
ZFS mirrored/raidz flash drives! lolSolandri - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
That was actually a thing back in the Usenet days (when you weren't sure if every piece of a large file would make it to everyone). You'd break the file into, say, 30 pieces, then add 10 parity pieces. As long as people got at least 30 of the 40, they could recreate the original file.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive
I used to do it with my photo archive backups to CD-R / DVD-R, so a disc or two dying of bit rot wouldn't cause irrecoverable data loss. Just substitute another disc with parity info and I could recover the original disc contents.
29a - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
This is what you need to use if your going with optical disks.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
mr_tawan - Monday, July 1, 2019 - link
Just bought a pack of five 100GB BDXL disc when I went to Japan earlier this year. Still wonder what to put on...khanikun - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
I just wish the prices of them would drop. Guess there's just not mass purchases of BD media to get that price lowered. Hell, I don't personally know anyone that even has a BD drive in their comp and I'm a Windows system administrator. It's like no one cares to backup anything.I've just got a couple 50 disc spindles of BD-DL media, but past that, the price increases significantly.
Tams80 - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
Even if you choose another route, for really important data, optical media is a cheap extra that's pretty easy to maintain. You could easily and cheaply write the data from other sources onto fresh discs every decade or two.nagi603 - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
"and flash degrades unless you keep it in the freezer or some"So does DVD, as I've (and no doubt others) found out after moving my optically stored stuff to hdds after about a decade of them sitting in a box. Not much, but even Verbatim had some degraded / at least partialla unreadable discs.
JKJK - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
Ah. Back in the day when being an optical-nerd was a thing and Taiyo Yuden verbatims (both cd and dvd) was the best you could ever get!There where dedicated webshops selling high end cd/dvd recordable media and Taiyo Yuden was always the highest rated and most expensive).
I still having some unused 8x Taiyo Yuden verbatim DVD+R (or was it DVD-R, I don't remember)'s lying around somewhere I think.
I still use and buy verbatim optical if I need it.
sheh - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
Never had a TY Verbatim DVD, only MCC.Samus - Monday, July 1, 2019 - link
Taiyo Yuden was the popular choice at computer shows back in the 90's and they never did me wrong. Wide compatibility with game consoles of the era and pre-CD-R compliant car audio decks was icing on the cake.rarson - Monday, July 1, 2019 - link
CMC sells what is supposedly Taiyo Yuden discs now, as they bought the technology from TY. From what I've heard, they did move manufacturing from Taiwan to China, but still utilize the same technology and quality. I just bought a spindle of 100 CD-Rs, they seem to be working great in my 3DO so far.StrangerGuy - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
I only use DVDs these days solely for working with weird VMware implementations where the USB passthrough doesn't work at all but DVD drive does.asmian - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
Don't forget QuickPar to add essential redundancy/error-checking to your backup DVD-Rs, at the cost of a little capacity. It's not just for Usenet...sheh - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
It might degrade gradually, but I've never had good quality optical media become unreadable. The oldest CD-Rs I have are 20+ years. It might also depend on storage and environmental conditions, and on writer/write quality. Also the reader is part of the equation; some drives aren't as good. In particular I suspect laptop drives.sheh - Saturday, June 29, 2019 - link
This was a reply to nagi603.AnandTech: Replying without Javascript doesn't honor the parent hierarchy. It's been a problem for years...
PeachNCream - Sunday, June 30, 2019 - link
I wish they'd fix that because I usually disable Javascript for performance and safety reasons. Anandtech is a hideously slow site on mobile with Javascript turned on. I suppose they could learn how to build a proper website and that could also address some of the problem (not the ads though - Anandtech without an adblocker is one of the worst sites I see on a regular basis).erple2 - Monday, July 1, 2019 - link
Firefox with uBlock works fine on my Android phone. It's not that slow to load.Qasar - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link
i dont have any performance issues with AT and java... hey PeachNCream, maybe time for a comp upgrade ? maybe yours is showing its age ;-)rarson - Monday, July 1, 2019 - link
Same here. I actually found a disc I burned back in 1996 a few months ago and while it looked rather sketchy it read perfectly fine.Xajel - Sunday, June 30, 2019 - link
So Blu-Ray is the last optical media standard for consumers, while there might be other technologies for the private sector, there's almost no need to develop another standard, maybe just developing or improving the current BR discs more like the UHD 4K (HDR) (which are just a capacity bump versions with more layers, the software on another hand is different as it goes for higher compression HEVC which supports higher resolution contents as well, making original BR players incompatible with UHD BR discs)deil - Sunday, June 30, 2019 - link
I might be old fasioned but I keep 2x2TB 3.5 HDD's raided for that purpose, and online google backup. 10 years now I think, those drives never failed me, now I also keep 2x8TB for fresher things. Always raid if you care for data.laternser - Thursday, December 12, 2019 - link
Sorry to lose Verbatim --- this is a great loss to reliable offsite backup media.I have hundreds of Verbatim DVD+R and +RW dating back to the mid/late 1990s. Many CD-R disks of various brands back 28(?) years. Many BluRay BD-RE and BD-R (Panasonic media) for the last decade. Very very few have failed ... (mostly re-writable media that was re-written).
CMC media was always junk going way back. Some of their cd-rom media survives (I must admit)
China? No way this will be the same.
Just purchasing the technology does not mean it gets used.
Made in Japan media Panasonic and Verbatim media was reliable.
Very few companies embrace quality after decades of being willing to sell junk.
My question --- Is there any media still made in Japan?
olsenn - Friday, January 21, 2022 - link
I have around 1600 BDXL discs burned and stored away in 320-disc capacity disc binders, neatly tucked into my bookshelf. More than 160 terabytes!Most are standard 100GB Verbatim/Mitshibishi HTL (MABL) discs I got off eBay from Japan. They are the cheapest option I have found that is still suitable for my needs. Some are the more expensive, and supposedly longer lasting, 100GB M-Disc. also by Verbatim. Lastly, I have some 128GB Sony discs which I have taken from some Generation 1 Sony 1.5TB Optical Disc Archive cartridges.