Why Use Optical Media For Data Archiving In 2024? An FAQ
About my archiving approach (methodology):
I’m beginning to get the same questions a lot from people curious about optical media archiving so thought I would write up a quick FAQ:
- Why not just store ‘stuff’ on the cloud?
The approach linked to above is intended for people who want to create physical archives of their digital data.
There are a number of reasons why some people feel uncomfortable committing important personal data to the cloud. The cloud is … simply somebody else’s computer.
- But … isn’t optical media dead?
Optical media’s popularity has drastically declined but it remains a relatively popular medium for data archiving thanks to the relatively longevity of the medium in cold/offline storage environments.
- Why not use LTO?
LTO is great for cheap archival storage. But it’s not actually a great medium for cold/offline archival.
Tape can experience data rot in as little as 30 years.
Many forms of optical media are rated for stability in excess of 100 years.
- But … hard drives are so much cheaper!
The advantage of optical media for archival use-cases is data permanence and not cost savings. In cold storage environments, archival-grade optical media can be expected to outlast HDDs and SDDs by many decades.
- Is it time consuming?
Refining the workflow and writing about it has been far more time-consuming than the actual process of maintaining the archive (but this has been a labor of love and a source of periodic joy for me. I get a somewhat regular stream of emails from other optical media users around the world!)
I create about 2 x 25GB BD-Rs per month. I could reduce my frequency further by using bigger discs but … I quite enjoy the monthly ritual and creating physical products from my creative efforts. Burning those two discs requires about 10 minutes of hands-on effort.
- Don’t you need to store lots and lots of discs?
If you’re a photographer/videographer (etc) storing relatively modest quantities of personal data …. this doesn’t require as many discs or as much room as people seem to imagine.
It took me the bulk of 2 years to fill up half a small box…. and many of those discs were test burns. If you use the largest capacity media on the market currently (128GB BD-R) you can use even less space.
Imagine you’re archiving episodes of your podcast and each episode is about 100Mb. You can fit more than 1,200 episodes on a single 128GB BDXL. You get the idea.
- Should I Use M-Discs Or “regular” Blu Rays?
People have different opinions on this, often strident ones.
I have come around to the opinion that “regular” inorganic HTL Blu-Rays with MABL are perfectly good enough for archival use.
I would still focus on buying media from reputable manufacturers and avoiding ‘bargains’. Shop for quality.
I still use lots of M-Discs but no longer regard them as ‘essential’.
I do not believe that Verbatim are selling regular HTL media as BD-R Mdiscs (see: the “fake M-Disc charge”).
However, I do believe that they have done a woefully inadequate job at explaining how their BD-R M-Discs are superior to their regular product line (assuming, of course, that they are). I would personally like to see head to head comparisons in accelerated ageing conditions and a much higher degree of transparency about the differences between the products (insofar as information can be disclosed without revealing trade secrets). However I also think that it’s a somewhat moot point because I believe that MABL discs are “good enough”.
- What about using CDs or DVDs for data storage?
I don’t recommend using CD-Rs and DVD-R for data storage, including products marketed as “archival grade.”
The gold CDs look impressive (visually) but still contain organic dyes in the recording layer.
I would take a bet on an MABL BD-R disc over these products any day of the week.
- What burner should I buy for the M-Disc?
Assuming you’re looking at BD-R M-Disc and not the DVDs … just about any Blu Ray burner on the market should be able to read and write them.
For BDXL .. it’s worth double-checking the spec and remembering that tri-layer (BD-TL) and quad-layer (BD-QL) are usually listed separately.
I’ve heard that Pioneer make good products and recently picked up the BDR XD08.
A stronger belief is that products with an independent AC-DC supply should be favored over those that can only draw bus power from USB connections. I would favor internal SATA drives in an enclosure over external slimline ones.
I’m waiting on mine in the mail and plan to swap over to that as my primary device and keep the Pioneer for times when I’m travelling.
- Are you worried about deprecation?
Personally, no.
Consider the existence of the humble floppy disc which has a miniscule storage volume and is subject to data rot. Despite the existence of far more advanced storage technologies, reading floppy discs — if they’re good — is trivially easy and floppy disc readers can be found without difficulty.
Optical media remains in widespread circulation. There will come a point in time at which optical media will be greatly threatened by deprecation. By that time successor technologies for offline data storage will likely have come to market. This will not be an overnight process.
Digital data preservation is a relatively new discipline — beginning with the advent of computers less than a century ago. Best practices are very much in their early stages of formulation.
But long term data preservation efforts to date have focused on periodically moving data to newer storage technologies. You may have once owned VHS tapes or had an older relative who did. Like me, you might have digitised them. You might have digitised them onto optical media and later moved them to a cloud. This is roughly “the way” so far.
I see no reason why those choosing to preserve data in archive on optical cannot follow the same process.
- Do you use ‘the cloud’?
Like most people I use all manner of cloud services on a daily basis. I also use clouds for backup. (But … backup isn’t archival!)
For archiving my personal data … this is the method I’ve chosen to run with.
