As Sony exits, Verbatim doubles down on optical media — stable supply of discs is a "top priority" despite shrinking market

Mine usually have the life span of 1 toddler encounter

500gb for ~100 US dollars is not bad* (just saw it is AU). I don't think I'd ever need something quite so long lasting and will we even watch or interact with media the same way in like 40 years? Movies and screens may get phased out for holo or something no ones even dreamed of yet.

If the burner is cheap enough, or you can borrow one, backing up family photos in a way that will be viewable in hundreds of years time would be worth it to me.
- I would not even be confident that the disc would be readable in 50 years' time except by certain archivists or hobbyists.
  There are so many hours of music people wrote on Amigas or Atari STs that are just floating around out there on floppy discs that are still readable, but only by a very small number of people, so they will never be heard again, and it's been only 30 years.
  Another example- right now I have family movies my parents took back in the 60s on Super-8 films. Super-8 isn't exactly impossible to play, but why would I get a Super-8 projector and a screen just to watch those even though they're watchable? That would be both cost- and space-prohibitive. Thankfully, I had them digitized a long time ago.
  
  This is why you add a disc reader and a laptop, that can run directly from a power brick without a battery installed, in the safe. This way the next generations have a way to read it and transfer it to modern media.
- Not without a disk drive that runs scrambled data decoding (BD+) in a VM on top of decryption (AACS), according to the (reverse engineered) DRM spec of bluray.
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Blu-ray
  Sorry, but, if nothing else, the DRM makes Bluray and DVD as long-term archive unsuitable.
  
  None of that is relevant to a self burned M/Archive BD
  
  They don't hold that long.
  
  Got any evidence for that claim?
  
  Yeah, physical evidence.
  
  So basically no,you haven't.
  
  If you're encrypting and scrambling your own personal data and not properly saving the keys, that L is on you dog.
- I have like 3 pictures I actually care about anymore I'd be more than willing to delete the rest. My parents have always taken like at least a dozen pictures every time we "do something" and I always have to ask... Why drop everything you are doing for a picture that you will, in all likelihood, never look at again. I'd much rather just enjoy the moment tbh
  
  Because in 20 years your memory will be lost. But you'll run across the photo and it will be incredible. It will both remind you and fill in the gaps that your memory lost.
  I have all the best photos of my kids printed every year into a photo album. I don't trust digital despite having 3 copies. My 100 year azzo verbatim DVDs kept in black cases in the basement went bad after 10 years. Mdisc on paper should actually last 100 unlike azzo but I don't trust it either.
  
  What exactly happened to the DVDs in the basement? That's really interesting, indeed DVDs also claimed 100+ years of life span, but as you can see that's only the theoretical maximal in perfect conditions, which don't exist in real life, and the same thing happened to your DVDs can happen to Blu-Ray disks too
  
  M-Discs are not like standard Blu-rays, they were designed specifically for long-term archive storage. If you follow the link at the top of this thread you can get some more detailed information on them. They're supposed to last several hundred years, but of course no one has empirical evidence of that yet.
  
  Ooo I see! That's awesome!
  Yeah unfortunately we don't have hundred-years data on them lmao but at least it would still be interesting to see how examples of such disk go as years and decades go by :p
  
  Burned DVDs use a dye that turns dark when hit with a laser. The dye was claimed to be stable for 100 years but wasn't. Mdisc is different and should last longer.
  
  That might be the case, but I haven't cared about taking photos for over 25 years, not sure having kids or losing all my memories would change any of that.
  
  You should value yourself more. If you think it's important to have history passed down more than 20 years or whatever the average person remembers, then your own life should be as valuable to you.
  
  I can pass down stories much more valuable than a series of photos my kids will throw in the bin. My grandmother had huge photo albums, now she's gone and we just stuff them into the back of a closet.
  
  Ideally you want stories to go with the photos. Your memory will fade. You'll forget some stories. For the stories you remember you'll forget details. Write the stories. The photos are a supplement for your stories.
  I write notes on the photos.
  
  lol I don't think you're the target demographic if you can't imagine any scenario of this having a good purpose to exist. It's apparently rated by the Department of Defense, definitely has some applications people are interested in. Hell, you could recoup costs on harddrive failures alone over your child's lifetime, just need a reader. Would be a pretty neat present to give someone as well filled like a photo album with personal media/ favorite games/ music/ whatever you want backed up for your kids. People spend a lot of money on multiple backup options so this is just another ace in your deck along with other safeguards.
  
  True, I'm no data hoarder. Just seems like it's a very small niche that this fits into. Never had a hard drive fail on me, but I'll give it a couple more decades lol
Not sure where you're from, but that website link is Australian and $150 AUD is about $94 USD at the moment.
- Ahh, didn't see the .au

I only have an estimated 96 remaining years on this planet. Why would I care about my data after that?

We regularly look at photographs taken at the dawn of photography, and read documents created hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
There is a use case for this tech.

~~If only they weren't so expensive.~~

Edit: OK not terrible for AU dollars. Missed that.

But still, a 20TB backup would be $4K USD. Too hefty compared to even redundant magnetic storage.

Nothing stops people from mix matching backup media.
If I lose the series I downloaded versus my family photos, not the same impact.
The fuck are you backing up that you have 20tb of?
- Also I feel like at that point you might as well go tape rather than fiddle around with 40 Blu-rays.
  
  I mean, tapes just don't have the same longetivity as an archive grade optical disc, but it's probably fine for your collection of porn and pirated movies.
  
  Not wrong, but 30 years are probably good enough for most backup cases
  
  Most likely. Things like photos you want to live forever though, you never know what people will be interested in in the future.
- Photographer, videographer mostly, buy also data hoarder, etc. I still have all my pre-AOL data, too.