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by profquail 1521 days ago
M-DISC: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

They’re special DVD and Blu-ray discs designed for long-term storage. DVD and Blu-ray are so widely used, it seems likely you’d be able to find some equipment in 30 years that could still read them.

2 comments

Do you really think physical disc and media players for them will last long? I still cling to an old blu-ray player but every time I buy some discs it feels like I’m sifting through the ruins of a collapsed building (in some giant bin in the middle of a large retailer hallway). I also feel like I never see a single other person looking at or purchasing discs…
> Do you really think physical disc and media players for them will last long?

Yes.

There are too many use cases for physical and immutable long-term offline storage for this niche to go unfilled, but the niche is too small (at present) to prompt the development of a replacement medium and format, so while I am sure that the materials and read/write hardware will continue to evolve (better data longevity guarantees, read/write speed, physical durability, etc.) the implementations will remain compatible, or at least the reading ones will.

The research suggests that M-DISC Blu-Rays should be fairly durable if not handled often.

I think the disc players are the weak link. I can definitely imagine them going away nigh-entirely in a decade or three.

I didn't manage to find anywhere to buy these in my country. They could be tricky to get.