Technology

https://www.verbatim.com.au/products/m-disc-bdxl-100gb/

100 GB, and a lifespan of hundreds of years, it's hard to top that.

Verbatim is doing more than just keeping the formats on life support – it also unveiled new hardware at CES 2025. Its Slimline Blu-ray Writer lets you back up 4K video to Ultra HD Blu-ray and even comes bundled with antiquated Nero disc burning software.

This is the important part imo, given that LG and Sony both pulled out of the USB Blu-ray reader-writer market

https://www.verbatim-europe.com/en/blu-ray-writers/products/external-slimline-blu-ray-writer-43890

Means we'll be able to rip Blu-ray's into the future. At least, that's what I hope. Need to check there are cracks for these writers.

EDIT: Won't link to it here, but many Verbatim writers, UHD and otherwise, use Pioneer hardware internally and are therefore crackable.

M-Disc/Archive Blue ray discs are currently pretty much unrivaled if one needs WORM(write once read many) storage for important data.

Anything cloud is an issue in that regards, while a few options exist that somewhat imitate WORM to comply with regulations they are often expensive, harder to maintain and, if long term storage is required, prohibitivly expensive.

The next option, Tandberg RDX needs a far less popular writer, it's WORM media is far more expensive, far more sensitive towards exterior influences and it's much harder to make sure you will be able to read the data in 20 years.

LTO is nice, the tapes are somewhat cheap but the drives are extremely expensive - far to expensive for smaller businesses or consumers.

(And please for the love of god, normal exterior HDs,etc. are NOT backup media for long term storage, especially not WORM- which is important in times of ransomware attacks)

So in the end verbatim would be an absolute idiot to destroy this market. I work with a lot of smaller healthcare facilities and they all exclusively work with them - they routinely burn their data on a M-Disc that is then stored in a secure location, as they all need to provide their patient records for at least 10, mostly for 15, in some cases for 30 or more years. The doctors can literally go to jail if they do not comply with that.(And getting hacked or your building burning down is not an excuse)

As a CEO of a small company we also need to retain certain tax and accounting data for 10 years, some for 20 years. And even as a individual I have some stuff I legally must retain for 10 years.

And of course photos of important life events and some documents (insurance, mortgage) are also something I don't want to loose if the house burns down. Therefore the important stuff gets burned to a M-Disc three times a year and then locked into a bank vault quite a bit away.

I have a stack of Verbatim blanks I bought years ago just in case they ever stopped being sold; I’ve actually used quite a few to create daisy disks and audio CDs.

I still burn discs every now and then. Definitely glad to see I don't have to panic buy stockpiles of them now.

Unfortunately I don't think Verbatim manufactures any quad-layer discs, so Sony was the only real option for 128GB disks.

Furthermore, M-Disc is still very pricey per-GB, and their non M-Disc BD disks aren't priced that much better. I've also recently got a spindle of Verbatim BDXLs that every single one would fail to either write or read at the layer transitions, so having a single option here is already proving to be painful.

Who is going to keep making Minidiscs though?

Can someone tell me, why weren't optical discs (mechanically, ergonomically) designed similarly to floppies? In a protective envelope with a window.

Sony PSP discs had something like that. More expensive and impractical from looks, the window part was always open and cleaning it from dirt is inconvenient if untouched for long. But then the cover for that window wouldn't break off, and the looks solve the problem of "looking obsolete" that arises with clueless baboon crowds. Sony engineering back then somehow evokes feelings in me.

So we should still buy all the MD and MiniDV tape we can get our hands on though

Verbatim for the win

Work to preserve physical media across all your entertainment. You give away your leverage as a consumer with every stream and digital "purchase" (because of course you legally own nothing digital from these companies, you lease the right to access them, until that company decides you no longer get that access, see Sony)

I did get a ~128 micro sdxc (micro center branded) for free, so, im kinda on the fence, but wont mind rocking a cd player again!

I've had good luck with their stuff so I'm pleased