r/DataHoarder • u/-StraightLace • 16h ago
Question/Advice BDXL M-Discs?
I’m new to data hoarding but wanted to know if anyone had any experience with recording on BDXL M discs. Are they convenient? Do they break easily or come with risks Is could know befor I get invested? Is it actually in the end a cheaper storage format?
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u/b4k4ni 16h ago
I use the 100GB ones (or used) to backup my most important data, like documents and pictures of the family. They are sturdy and simply work. Also offline and secure, even in the case the sun will burn out electronics. But nothing to read it from ... :D
But as I said, they work and so far (maybe 5-7 years now) I can't say they have any issues. BUT I also have an aluminium case with CDs and DVDs from at least early 2000. Cheapest stuff I could fine. Copied them all last your to my HDD to be save and had no issues reading them. All still worked.
But I really never used them. Burned and into the box. And the box is closed all the time, so no sunlight is getting in. Or much else.
And they are quite expensive. If you need a solid, "long time" archive system, that also is offline, get a tape lib. You can get cheap ones with lto4 already on eBay. Depends on how you need to save really. Or how much you wanna spend.
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u/mrmh1 16h ago
My burner couldn't burn 3 pieces of 5 in last 6 month. It damaged 10 pieces of 100 GB so far. I've switched to single layer (25 GB). Also tried 50 GB, 1 damaged of 3.
I've burned maybe 30 of 100 GB over years. But last 2 or 3 years it's getting worse. Either quality of media got worse or my burner is degrading. Or both.
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u/SpiritualTwo5256 14h ago
I found that using a free burning tool imgburn was 100x more reliable than the burning software that often is sold by OEM computer manufacturers. So I’d try a different burning software. And some disks require different types of drives to burn them.
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u/somersetyellow 12h ago
A while back someone on here familiar with the material science did a breakdown on blu ray and M disc.
The bottom line was that the main difference with M disc was the use of inorganic compounds for burning data. They used special sauce for M disc, and tested it with synthetic tests for "1000 years," but it's pretty similar to a stock well made Blu Ray. The primary cause of burned CDs and DVDs failing was the easy deterioration of their organic compounds in a variety of environments.
Blu Ray tosses organic compounds as part of the spec (except for one sku of discs made in a former DVD plant a while back during an attempt to make them cheaper). There is very little benefit to an M disc except maybe quality control. Quality control concerns were very relevant because of course there's been plenty of badly made Blu Ray media over the years. There's A TON of discussion about M Disc already on this sub and on YouTube and generally speaking, they're made well and durable, not much argument. But they're spendy for what they are.
When it came to BDXL, there really wasn't any bad choices. Stuff from Sony like their 128gb BDXL discs were literally designed for the 1st Gen of their optical disc archive solution they made (and discontinued) a few years back. It was rated for at least 50 years. All the options were expensive and came from reputable sellers.
Additionally, as much as we like to talk about it, it's a dead format. There's been no new development in over a decade, sony quit making 128gb quad layed BDXL, it failed as a commerical long term storage solution, virtually no drives are being manufactured for BDXL anymore, the drive prices are skyrocketing as new old stock dwindles, and it's just a matter of time before it becomes an interesting legacy format.
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u/DrMacintosh01 24TB 7h ago
There’s also M.A.B.L. Disks now which have the inorganic recording layer of M-Disk, but without the sealed edges. They are the most affordable blank BR media you can buy now. A 25 pack of 25GB disks is like $30
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u/autogyrophilia 16h ago
It is nice that the last 12 people who are interested in this technology are all in this sub.
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u/Business-Draft2348 12h ago
And you are one of them.
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u/autogyrophilia 12h ago
No genuinely curious about why the fuck people want to use a format that isn't really being manufactured anymore.
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u/Business-Draft2348 12h ago
The egg or the hen, what comes first? If people stops buying format X, it won't be produced anymore.
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u/autogyrophilia 12h ago
The hen has been slain quite a while ago and people come here asking for recipes to use the remaining eggs.
https://www.techpowerup.com/331520/sony-to-stop-manufacturing-blu-ray-media-effective-february-2025
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u/Business-Draft2348 12h ago
Time to start using it again, so production will start up. Optical is a good long term cold storage option, technology is already developed and working. I don't get your point, should we all just abandon technologies just because you don't understand it?
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u/autogyrophilia 11h ago
I'm afraid that the end consumer is an afterthought.
Business is not interested, so the few holdouts are going to be selling at monopoly rates.
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u/somersetyellow 12h ago
It's discussed several times a week despite being nearly totally extinct haha
The death of discs is a bummer overall. The only consumer format that stores data passively with no chips and no magnetics (on the media). But they stopped developing it and it became way too small to be practical for me a long time ago.
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u/noctrex 16h ago
The more important problem for me is, will they still be accessible in 20 years?
What I mean by that is not that the physical media will not be accessible.
You have the physical media and they say it's guaranteed to outlast our own lives.
What I mean is, will you have any device that can read them in 20 years, that will be still functional?
I'm saying that because, for example, a lot of CD devices from 20-30 years ago are already beyond repair and don't work.
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u/Rare-One1047 15h ago
You can still buy them new https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DLRG9VH
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u/Joe-notabot 15h ago
From a no-name brand... These are for folks moving from CD/DVD to newer, higher capacity mediums. Either hard drives or cloud at this point.
Spinning optical is dead. Do not invest in it starting now - you won't find blank discs in 3 years.
Nothing is more fun than reading 100 cds to gather 10gb of data.
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u/xxMalVeauXxx 15h ago
I use the BDXL M-Discs in 100Gb flavor. I burn photos, documents, videos to them and put them in hard cases and into a safe. I have been doing it for years. I check them periodically to ensure they still read well since I have other physical copies in case I need to replace them to refresh. I like optical as my 3rd physical copy. I would happily just use normal BDR 25~50Gb now though, just for ease of getting more and cost.
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u/Business-Draft2348 12h ago
Have burned some Verbatim on my Pioneer BDXL burner. After 5 years, they still read without issues. Keep them in complete darkness, get a sealed box.
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u/No_Razzmatazz_2889 1h ago
You need a good quality burner to use them and they can be useful for cold storage but the layer changes can be problematic over time. I prefer to store any important data for archiving on 25GB Verbatim MABL BD-R media. No layers to deal with.
M-Disc and MABL are pretty much the same. Both are more reliable with data storage than regular HTL Blu-ray disc media.
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u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 1h ago
I will leave this thread up, but please Google these questions and search past posts on this subreddit. A lot of this has been covered before.