Are M-Discs Good For Archiving?

[Chmewy]

So I like to record my Discord audio that me and my friends talk in. I want to be able to just go back in years or decades to come to remember the awesome times we had playing games together. But I do know that Hard drives degrade overtime when unplugged and would need to restore them every couple of years. I know from what I have read that Normal DVDs and Blueray only last for about 4 years and normal Hard Drives last for around 6 years unplugged. I have backups on a hard drives right now and have another one in the mail for a second backup, but I wanted to know if this M-Disc was a option. The Discs are pretty expensive for about $3 a disc, but they say that it will last a very long time. I dunno, what do you think ,if not, what do you suggest?  

 

M-Disc- http://www.mdisc.com/corporate/

[Tiwaz]

hdds dont degrade, SSDs do when their charge degrades overtime. if i was you id get a bunch of 4,7GB DVDs and burn the files on them

[Chmewy]

Just now, Tiwaz said:

hdds dont degrade, SSDs do when their charge degrades overtime. if i was you id get a bunch of 4,7GB DVDs and burn the files on them

I mean there data starts to degrade, not there physical state

[MrDrWho13]

9 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

hdds dont degrade, SSDs do when their charge degrades overtime. if i was you id get a bunch of 4,7GB DVDs and burn the files on them

DVDs can degrade too because the ink (That most DVD-RWs use rather than metal on professional DVDs) can oxidise.

 

The best solution is to keep moving data every few years between drives.

[Daniel644]

2 minutes ago, Tiwaz said:

hdds dont degrade, SSDs do when their charge degrades overtime. if i was you id get a bunch of 4,7GB DVDs and burn the files on them

DVD's SUCK for long term data storage, I had several DVD's even some of the nicer Sony's from way back when start to fail on me when I shifted my data collection back to hard drive, had to go find alternate sources to replace those files.

 

for long term storage depending on the amount of data you need the Cloud would be a potential choice, Google Drive gives you 20 some odd GB of data storage, which depending on bitrate could be 6 months to a year, maybe more, worth of uninterrupted audio, which could be enough depending on how many hours worth you have, if not you are better off transferring the data from 1 hard drive to another every so often (ALWAYS KEEP COPIES IN 2 LOCATIONS, for all IRREPLACEABLE DATA, the cloud does this for you).

[MrDrWho13]

1 minute ago, Daniel644 said:

DVD's SUCK for long term data storage, I had several DVD's even some of the nicer Sony's from way back when start to fail on me when I shifted my data collection back to hard drive, had to go find alternate sources to replace those files.

 

for long term storage depending on the amount of data you need the Cloud would be a potential choice, Google Drive gives you 20 some odd GB of data storage, which depending on bitrate could be 6 months to a year, maybe more, worth of uninterrupted audio, which could be enough depending on how many hours worth you have, if not you are better off transferring the data from 1 hard drive to another every so often (ALWAYS KEEP COPIES IN 2 LOCATIONS, for all IRREPLACEABLE DATA, the cloud does this for you).

I would say if data is important you should keep it in at least 3 places. (At least one of these offsite) and all regularly kept up to date.

[Chmewy]

1 minute ago, Daniel644 said:

DVD's SUCK for long term data storage, I had several DVD's even some of the nicer Sony's from way back when start to fail on me when I shifted my data collection back to hard drive, had to go find alternate sources to replace those files.

 

for long term storage depending on the amount of data you need the Cloud would be a potential choice, Google Drive gives you 20 some odd GB of data storage, which depending on bitrate could be 6 months to a year, maybe more, worth of uninterrupted audio, which could be enough depending on how many hours worth you have, if not you are better off transferring the data from 1 hard drive to another every so often (ALWAYS KEEP COPIES IN 2 LOCATIONS, for all IRREPLACEABLE DATA, the cloud does this for you).

So I have a data plan on my internet, so I really would like to avoid the cloud service. I could just buy multiple discs just in case cause there cheap.... But I still will have them on a hard drive

[Daniel644]

Just now, Chmewy said:

So I have a data plan on my internet, so I really would like to avoid the cloud service. I could just buy multiple discs just in case cause there cheap.... But I still will have them on a hard drive

an OFFSITE location is important, having dozens of copies all in your house won't help you if you house burns down or gets washed away in a flood. You need to keep one copy somewhere else, bare minimum at a friend or family members house somewhere else.

 

what I do for the office is we have the files on the active computer and once a week we backup to the local external drive and every other week I bring in the second external drive I keep at my house and update it, so worst case scenario if the office is lost we lose at most 2 weeks worth of data and we do all this without using the internet, I designed this plan based on the fact the office uses Outlook which has between all the PST files reached nearly 20GB of data and that would take far to long to upload to the cloud everytime it needed uploading due to how slow are upload speeds are (6Mb up).

[Tiwaz]

20 hours ago, MrDrWho13 said:

DVDs can degrade too because the ink (That most DVD-RWs use rather than metal on professional DVDs) can oxidise.

 

The best solution is to keep moving data every few years between drives.

CDs and DVDs are being burnt not written on with ink, the data is basically being carved inthe disc

[MrDrWho13]

3 hours ago, Tiwaz said:

CDs and DVDs are being burnt not written on with ink, the data is basically being carved inthe disc

From my memory of researching OP's question myself a couple of years ago, most consumer DVD-R and DVD-RW use a thin layer of ink/dye on the shiny side (under the plastic layer) which the laser burns into. This means it can react with the oxygen in the air and physically degrade which could cause the data to be lost over a period of a few years.

Also apparently the best way to store DVDs is upright, not flat in a pile or on a surface because they decay from the outside of the disc to the inside. -Which is also why you shouldn't fill the full 4.7GB when archiving because the edge data could be lost. (They're written to from the middle to the edge so less data means you're further from the edge)

 

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this info, but it's what I found before. It certainly makes sense.

 

I would definitely point OP to a HDD or SSD solution which is regularly updated.