M-Disc for data back up? Optical may not be dead after all.

Nah. I'll find a way to test it somewhere.

I use M-discs; I don’t need them to last 1,000 or even 100 years, just enough until a better backup solution arrives or until I call it quits.

I trust archival optical discs more than hard drives or flash drives, and I’m not worried about the inability to read them in the future any more than I would be about being able to read a hard drive or flash drive.

The problem with a hard drive is that while it might work for ten or more years, it might implode in ten months or less; I know this first hand, sadly, oh so sadly, not debatable.

As noted, you can still read old floppy discs from two to three decades ago, and optical discs, from CDs to Blu Ray, are exponentially more abundant and engrained into the overall storage infrastructure than floppy discs ever were.

All of this said, I wouldn’t necessarily suggests replacing hard drives with M-discs or other optical discs, but instead to use these more for supplemental archival purposes rather than for general backup…there is a difference.

Admittedly, recording times are slow, and this would discourage even the most diligent user, so it’s media that you might want to use to store only the best of your files, whether photos, important documents, and so forth.

sjones wrote in post #18434195
Admittedly, recording times are slow, and this would discourage even the most diligent user, so it’s media that you might want to use to store only the best of your files, whether photos, important documents, and so forth.

But even doing 25GB at a time, which may be a few weeks to months for me, isn't a big deal. I'll just get it started and go do something else (laundry, watch tv, clean up the house, etc)

Now if I did weddings or other photography for work, it would be a pain to burn multiple discs per week, or even every few days depending on the volume.

sjones wrote in post #18434195
All of this said, I wouldn’t necessarily suggests replacing hard drives with M-discs or other optical discs, but instead to use these more for supplemental archival purposes rather than for general backup…there is a difference.

Admittedly, recording times are slow, and this would discourage even the most diligent user, so it’s media that you might want to use to store only the best of your files, whether photos, important documents, and so forth.

I just got 50 CMC Taiyo Yuden DVD-Rs in the mail today. They should be OK for a few decades. Of course I don't really know, nobody has kept them for more than a few years, but they have a chance. At least they can be recorded and read in ordinary optical drives.

I won't be using them for backups and not for archiving all my files either. Instead they are for distributing selected files to family members. Since the disks will most likely get stored away, maybe for many years, they need to last a long time.

I am not distributing any raw files. None of my family members have a clue about raw. They only get finished JPGs. There will be a variety of other files on the disk too. All together, everything will fit on a single DVD. So recording speed is not an issue. But it should be decently fast anyway for these disks at 8X.

Backing up is also important, but I do that on external hard drives. When I finally die or become senile, that process will stop, and those hard drives will all probably get reformatted or tossed out. The CMC TY disks will remain, in the bottoms of boxes in people's attics, and hopefully the contents will still be readable when a curious grandchild discovers them.

sjones wrote in post #18434195
...

All of this said, I wouldn’t necessarily suggests replacing hard drives with M-discs or other optical discs, but instead to use these more for supplemental archival purposes rather than for general backup…there is a difference.

I feel the same. I am impatient and want immediate results. I can't get that here, but HDD is clearly much faster both for back and restore.

So yes, having now successfully recorded a few M-Disk, I will be implementing it as an ADDITION to my current multi hard drive bck ups. The M-Discs will be for dire emergency use,. or for long after I die

This seems like a logical approach which I may incorporate vs. burning everything do M-Disk.

And rather than just picking and choosing, (which I would do as well) I have a semi automated solution. I use an xcopy batch file that excludes RAW files to make an archive that only includes all of the files I have already taken the time to process,. Tiff, .psd and jpeg get copied, the thousands of unprocessed RW files get left alone. This cuts the back up down from terabytes to hundreds of gigabytes.

I have been using M-Disc as an archival backup for 5+ years, starting with DVD media and now using Blu-Ray. This is my fail safe, off site, last resort back up. I haven't had a write failure on any disc(nearing 100 total at this point), nor have I had an issue with reading a disc on any drive that supports the file type on the Disc. I burn RAW files and JPEGS on separate discs, the JPEG discs have been fine in multiple DVD and Blu-Ray players as well as PC based reader/writers.

The only downside is the lengthy write times as compared to HDD's and SSD's.

Hello everyone,

I just joined the forum and it is very useful for my purposes.

I shoot many cameras, including medium format and I would like to archive my best Raw files and TIFs that I print on M-disc or Blu-Ray discs.

Can anyone suggest a good quality burner and media?

I print up to 40x60 inches and I want to be certain my files are archived.
Some of my TIFs are between 300mb and 600mb.

Thank you very much,
Mike

This is the one I got from Amazon back when I wrote the original post;

https://smile.amazon.c​om …_asin_title?ie=​UTF8&psc=1

I haven't used it much, but all my tests worked out fine.

mherring52 wrote in post #18796186
Can anyone suggest a good quality burner and media?
Thank you very much,
Mike

These drives are relatively inexpensive but I would recommend either Samsung or LG, just because of brand recognition. Also, don't be looking for USB 3.0. The burning process is slow and USB 2.0 is more than adequate for the read/write process.

I also suggest you read https://www.lifewire.c​om …uter-optical-drive-832403 before jumping in.

Thanks! I am going to give it a try - just for my important images.

Good to know - thank you. I usually go with USB 3 or better for speed, but certainly not needed for the slow burning process.