They're a very common form of personal backup. A few discs and an USB writer and you get a very long lasting medium for passwords, personal files, family photos etc.
Can also archive multimedia of course, the smallest discs are 25 GB and can pack a few films, a season of a series, or a lot of music.
i guess, but they're not great for backup. Eps. R/RW optical media doesn't last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged. You'd be better off with tape for long-term storage. or an M-Disk or some similar magnetic backup solution.
optical media doesn't last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged
I beg to differ. I've been backing things up to optical for 25 years now with minimal issues. CDs could be easily scratched but it hasn't been the case for DVD and BR.
M-DISK uses in-organic substances that make the discs mostly immune to exposure but it's a more recent invention. Proper storage and handling still goes a long way towards protecting discs even if they're not in-organic.
M-Discs had merit in the DVD era. It’s a common refrain of those who don’t know the intricacies and read a wired article years ago to claim they mean anything in the Blu-ray era. They don’t.
Standard Blu-ray Discs have all the technologies that supposedly make m-discs so long lasting and as far as media that isn’t continuously updated and hashed from live storage medium to live storage medium (cold, archival storage unpowered) they are about as good as you’ll get.
They are much tougher than DVDs. Of course a variety of things go into how long a disc remains readable and without damage to data including luck with regards to no impurities in the batch. Even m-disc themselves based their longest claims off storage in ideal situations like an inactive salt mine (commonly used for archives by governments). Kept out of sun, away from extreme heat (including baking in uninsulated 120 degree F heat all summer year after year), away from high humidity and away from UV exposure to the data side of the disc as well as scratches and such and they should last a quarter to half a century, some more.
In the Blu-ray era m-discs are just an overly expensive brand.
That all sounds like it’s still terrible idea to use optical media for backups
Politely disagree. M-disc for BD-Rs are still absolutely worth the money if you want to properly archive something. NIST has agreed that the archival lifetime of a M-Disc BD-R is 100+ years.
You have to be careful with normal BD-Rs because there are two different types of recording material on the market: High to Low and Low to High (LTH). You want to stay away from BD-R LTH discs as their longevity isn’t as good as the High to Low discs.
They're a very common form of personal backup. A few discs and an USB writer and you get a very long lasting medium for passwords, personal files, family photos etc.
Can also archive multimedia of course, the smallest discs are 25 GB and can pack a few films, a season of a series, or a lot of music.
i guess, but they're not great for backup. Eps. R/RW optical media doesn't last that long (5-10 years) and is easily damaged. You'd be better off with tape for long-term storage. or an M-Disk or some similar magnetic backup solution.
I beg to differ. I've been backing things up to optical for 25 years now with minimal issues. CDs could be easily scratched but it hasn't been the case for DVD and BR.
M-DISK uses in-organic substances that make the discs mostly immune to exposure but it's a more recent invention. Proper storage and handling still goes a long way towards protecting discs even if they're not in-organic.
M-Discs had merit in the DVD era. It’s a common refrain of those who don’t know the intricacies and read a wired article years ago to claim they mean anything in the Blu-ray era. They don’t.
Standard Blu-ray Discs have all the technologies that supposedly make m-discs so long lasting and as far as media that isn’t continuously updated and hashed from live storage medium to live storage medium (cold, archival storage unpowered) they are about as good as you’ll get.
They are much tougher than DVDs. Of course a variety of things go into how long a disc remains readable and without damage to data including luck with regards to no impurities in the batch. Even m-disc themselves based their longest claims off storage in ideal situations like an inactive salt mine (commonly used for archives by governments). Kept out of sun, away from extreme heat (including baking in uninsulated 120 degree F heat all summer year after year), away from high humidity and away from UV exposure to the data side of the disc as well as scratches and such and they should last a quarter to half a century, some more.
In the Blu-ray era m-discs are just an overly expensive brand.
That all sounds like it’s still terrible idea to use optical media for backups
Politely disagree. M-disc for BD-Rs are still absolutely worth the money if you want to properly archive something. NIST has agreed that the archival lifetime of a M-Disc BD-R is 100+ years.
You have to be careful with normal BD-Rs because there are two different types of recording material on the market: High to Low and Low to High (LTH). You want to stay away from BD-R LTH discs as their longevity isn’t as good as the High to Low discs.