Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
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dialogueravenous
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Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
Having recently purchased an LGBU40N for ripping 4K UHD blurays, I'm now considering whether to use 100gb m-discs as a long term archival format of critical data. I've heard some drives can be susceptible to scratching though so I'm wondering, is the LGBU40N sufficient for archiving critical, irreplaceable data or should I look at something else for that application? An LTO tape drive is out of my budget so all I've got is hard drives or optical media to work with. With commercially release movies it's not a big deal, you scratch up your disc, you go buy another one of the millions of copies that were produced...not so with archived irreplaceable data. Before I got the Silverstone TS14B for my LGBU40N, I wasn't using an enclosure and for some reason the drive wasn't ejecting so I unplugged the drive and immediately picked it up while the disc was still spinning and used a paper clip to force eject and I could hear the disc making some screeching noises, possibly the light pressure applied when holding the bare drive. I didn't see any visible scratches on the disc after this. It was just a commercially released disc, so not a big concern.
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DennisOlof
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Re: Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
I will add some information.
1. Don't use large discs for critical data, stick to 25Gb BD-R M-discs. You can run into issued with the layer change and some drives might have a hard time reading multiple layers. This is sometimes an issue with regular BluRay player for home cinema where the layer change does not work as it should.
2. I would also burn regular discs, just in case there is a issue reading the M-disc. They might not last as long but you don't really know, I did read back over 1000 dvds about ten years ago. I used pioneer and quality DVDs, CDs etc. I had no problems reading them back.
3. Create a system for your critical data and backups. That way you can store the data on 2.5 inch mechanical hard drives in external USB3 enclosure and also have that data backed up onto optical media.
Could be a good thing to also have duplicated optical media off site, perhaps a relative's house. Not a bad thing storing the optical media in a safe that can withstand fire etc. I do that including important documents, papers etc. This is not 100% protection but it should be good enough for most people. The optical media is more a backup in case of the offline mechanical drives fail.
About four weeks ago I found a IDE hard drive that is from 2006, turns out it holds a lot of important data for someone else. I had forgotten about that as I gave him a copy back in the day. He was upgrading the computer. The drive works and all the data is intact after 20 years not plugged in to a computer, that would not be the case if it was a SSD drive.
1. Don't use large discs for critical data, stick to 25Gb BD-R M-discs. You can run into issued with the layer change and some drives might have a hard time reading multiple layers. This is sometimes an issue with regular BluRay player for home cinema where the layer change does not work as it should.
2. I would also burn regular discs, just in case there is a issue reading the M-disc. They might not last as long but you don't really know, I did read back over 1000 dvds about ten years ago. I used pioneer and quality DVDs, CDs etc. I had no problems reading them back.
3. Create a system for your critical data and backups. That way you can store the data on 2.5 inch mechanical hard drives in external USB3 enclosure and also have that data backed up onto optical media.
Could be a good thing to also have duplicated optical media off site, perhaps a relative's house. Not a bad thing storing the optical media in a safe that can withstand fire etc. I do that including important documents, papers etc. This is not 100% protection but it should be good enough for most people. The optical media is more a backup in case of the offline mechanical drives fail.
About four weeks ago I found a IDE hard drive that is from 2006, turns out it holds a lot of important data for someone else. I had forgotten about that as I gave him a copy back in the day. He was upgrading the computer. The drive works and all the data is intact after 20 years not plugged in to a computer, that would not be the case if it was a SSD drive.
Re: Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
I haven't burned a disc in a long time. However, the common wisdom on this forum is that it is hard to find high quality media to burn these days. I think most or all the plants in Japan that made high quality media have shut down.
On a cost-per-gigabyte basis, mechanical hard drives are a lot cheaper. If you really have less than 25GB to store, then perhaps it doesn't matter, but most people's photo libraries are bigger than that these days.
Optical drives that can rip 4K UHDs are getting harder and harder to come by as supplies dwindle. Burning optical discs for backup just adds unnecessary wear and tear to the optical drive.
These days backing up to mechanical hard drives and perhaps a cloud service is probably better than backing up to optical media.
On a cost-per-gigabyte basis, mechanical hard drives are a lot cheaper. If you really have less than 25GB to store, then perhaps it doesn't matter, but most people's photo libraries are bigger than that these days.
Optical drives that can rip 4K UHDs are getting harder and harder to come by as supplies dwindle. Burning optical discs for backup just adds unnecessary wear and tear to the optical drive.
These days backing up to mechanical hard drives and perhaps a cloud service is probably better than backing up to optical media.
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DennisOlof
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Re: Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
@dcoke22
I too have not burned much in the last 10 years or so. I only recently burned probably 10 discs to test the Pioneer BluRay units I manage to buy from sellers on Ebay. There is a high possibility that burnable discs (DVD-R, BD-R etc) eventually go away. If enough people keep buy optical discs to own movies, music and burn discs etc it will continue to be manufactured. The process is resonable cheap by now and the technology is everywhere. From what I understand the largest manufacturer is Ritek in Taiwan, they make Verbatim and there own brand. There are a few others manufacturers left but they are probably small in comparison. And now with the global economy and world it is easy to order stuff from Japan, shipping is expensive but if you don't need that many optical discs this is not a problem.
Of course you should backup up to multiple media, not only optical discs but I fear that mechanical hard drives will go away too. I am sure no mechanical 2.5 inch hard drives are in production today, not that I know of. And if they stop selling 3.5 inch drives in computer shops or online because of low demand we could see a shift where production is focused on data centers. More an more users are moving over to SSD (and M2) only devices, but they don't care about backups etc. they only want more speed and larger SSDs.
Mechanical drives that are offline (or a mix of online / offline / cloud storage) is the best option. I prefer optical as a last resort backup of my personal pictures, videos etc. in case hard drives fail even though I will keep multiple copy of data on multiple drives.
I too have not burned much in the last 10 years or so. I only recently burned probably 10 discs to test the Pioneer BluRay units I manage to buy from sellers on Ebay. There is a high possibility that burnable discs (DVD-R, BD-R etc) eventually go away. If enough people keep buy optical discs to own movies, music and burn discs etc it will continue to be manufactured. The process is resonable cheap by now and the technology is everywhere. From what I understand the largest manufacturer is Ritek in Taiwan, they make Verbatim and there own brand. There are a few others manufacturers left but they are probably small in comparison. And now with the global economy and world it is easy to order stuff from Japan, shipping is expensive but if you don't need that many optical discs this is not a problem.
Of course you should backup up to multiple media, not only optical discs but I fear that mechanical hard drives will go away too. I am sure no mechanical 2.5 inch hard drives are in production today, not that I know of. And if they stop selling 3.5 inch drives in computer shops or online because of low demand we could see a shift where production is focused on data centers. More an more users are moving over to SSD (and M2) only devices, but they don't care about backups etc. they only want more speed and larger SSDs.
Mechanical drives that are offline (or a mix of online / offline / cloud storage) is the best option. I prefer optical as a last resort backup of my personal pictures, videos etc. in case hard drives fail even though I will keep multiple copy of data on multiple drives.
Re: Using 100gb M-discs to archive critical data long term, is LGBU40N in Silverstone TS14B sufficient?
Mechanical hard drives, like most other computer components, are in very high demand these days. SSDs are great, but the world keeps a lot of data that doesn't have to be accessed that fast. Earlier this year (in January I think), Western Digital announced that they'd already sold their entire production of mechanical hard drives for 2026. Seagate and Toshiba hard drives seem in short supply as well.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-is-already-sold-out-of-hard-drives-for-all-of-2026-chief-says-some-long-term-agreements-for-2027-and-2028-already-in-place
If it wasn't for AI companies buying absolutely everything, it would be relatively easy for you or me to buy a 30TB 3.5-inch hard drive and plug it into our computers or NAS. The cost/TB of mechanical hard drives is way, way lower than SSDs, the reliability is fairly high, and when most people are accessing storage at the other end of a network cable, mechanical hard drives (with perhaps a bit of SSD caching in front) are the way to go.
It wouldn't surprise me that 2.5-inch drive production has stopped. The places where one might want a physically smaller drive all use SSDs these days. 3.5-inch drive production, on the other hand, has a long life ahead of it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-begins-shipping-44tb-hard-drives-with-hamr-tech-to-data-centers-mozaic-4-platform-expands-to-10-platters
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/western-digital-is-already-sold-out-of-hard-drives-for-all-of-2026-chief-says-some-long-term-agreements-for-2027-and-2028-already-in-place
If it wasn't for AI companies buying absolutely everything, it would be relatively easy for you or me to buy a 30TB 3.5-inch hard drive and plug it into our computers or NAS. The cost/TB of mechanical hard drives is way, way lower than SSDs, the reliability is fairly high, and when most people are accessing storage at the other end of a network cable, mechanical hard drives (with perhaps a bit of SSD caching in front) are the way to go.
It wouldn't surprise me that 2.5-inch drive production has stopped. The places where one might want a physically smaller drive all use SSDs these days. 3.5-inch drive production, on the other hand, has a long life ahead of it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-begins-shipping-44tb-hard-drives-with-hamr-tech-to-data-centers-mozaic-4-platform-expands-to-10-platters