[SOLVED] blu ray burner lifespan?

[Pc6777]

I have a few extra blu ray drives sitting in a Rubbermaid bin because I have lots of stuff archived on archival m disc blu rays. will they degrade over time/do they have any sort of shelf life? if i power them up in 20 years will they still work? I use wh14ns40 and wh16ns40 drives. and I have lots of sata to usb adapters with the 12v power so if sata goes away i can still use them. does anyone here have any original cd/dvd drives from the 90s that still work? I also have an asus and pioneer external/slim drive.

 

[mdd1963]

I'd be more worried about the device being supported within whatever OS is prevalent or media still functioning than the device itself failing while sitting stored and refusing to work 20 years from now...

 

[Pc6777]

I'd be more worried about the device being supported within whatever OS is prevalent or media still functioning than the device itself failing while sitting stored and refusing to work 20 years from now...

true, thought about that, i can run a vm of of a current windows build and make do with no gpu drivers just to get data off ,or use legacy hardware and natively install build 20h2, but floppies still work on windows I think and old cd roms drives still work with it I think so its unlikely.

 

[Jacozeelie]

I still have a few cd-roms that still works perfectly. I got a nice old mobo with 4 ide channels and 4 sata channels which i use for data recovery and copying files from ide hdd to sata sdd

 

[Flayed]

Making three copies of a disc you want to be able to read years in the future is the way to go. One of them is bound to last.

 

[Karadjgne]

Discs only last as long as the plastic, so if kept away from UV and moisture, no reason they shouldn't last 20 years.

Best bet is doubling up on the media. If it looks like that format is about to become obsolete to software, drivers, support, then change the media to something current and re-store it. Just not on anything that requires voltage like SSDs etc as they have roughly a 1 year lifespan for data integrity if not powered and trim refreshed.

 

[USAFRet]

Discs only last as long as the plastic, so if kept away from UV and moisture, no reason they shouldn't last 20 years.

A couple of years ago, I pulled a big stack of home burned DVDs out of a box.
No UV or moisture, they were in big DVD binders.

All had been created between 5-10 years previous.
I got about a 50% success rate in reading them.

Now...these weren't expensive archival M discs.

But how data is stored and backed up/archived depends a lot on the use case.
Who will be accessing these in 20 years?

 

[Flayed]

The police store copies of video interviews on 3 discs.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

I have a few extra blu ray drives sitting in a Rubbermaid bin because I have lots of stuff archived on archival m disc blu rays. will they degrade over time/do they have any sort of shelf life? if i power them up in 20 years will they still work? I use wh14ns40 and wh16ns40 drives. and I have lots of sata to usb adapters with the 12v power so if sata goes away i can still use them. does anyone here have any original cd/dvd drives from the 90s that still work? I also have an asus and pioneer external/slim drive.

If stored under ideal conditions CD/DVD/Blu Ray media will degrade to useless within about 50 years (and as digital media, its good until the moment it isn't, unlike film which degrades, but is still usable for a while). You probably don't have museum-level preservation capability on hand, so estimate 30 years for a disk to degrade depending on your storage. However a clean digital copy burned to a new disk starts the clock all over again.

 

[Pc6777]

If stored under ideal conditions CD/DVD/Blu Ray media will degrade to useless within about 50 years (and as digital media, its good until the moment it isn't, unlike film which degrades, but is still usable for a while). You probably don't have museum-level preservation capability on hand, so estimate 30 years for a disk to degrade depending on your storage. However a clean digital copy burned to a new disk starts the clock all over again.

I use m discs they should last longer.

 

[Pc6777]

Discs only last as long as the plastic, so if kept away from UV and moisture, no reason they shouldn't last 20 years.

Best bet is doubling up on the media. If it looks like that format is about to become obsolete to software, drivers, support, then change the media to something current and re-store it. Just not on anything that requires voltage like SSDs etc as they have roughly a 1 year lifespan for data integrity if not powered and trim refreshed.

I also use dual hard drives for storage, I will chuck one in a bin and power it up every so often and the other one will be plugged into pc to easy access.

 

[Pc6777]

A couple of years ago, I pulled a big stack of home burned DVDs out of a box.
No UV or moisture, they were in big DVD binders.

All had been created between 5-10 years previous.
I got about a 50% success rate in reading them.

Now...these weren't expensive archival M discs.

But how data is stored and backed up/archived depends a lot on the use case.
Who will be accessing these in 20 years?

No idea if I will need them, just peace of mind

 

[Pc6777]

Did a little investigation. It seems there are still burners from 1995 is on ebay that are tested and working, although they could have made them better back then(japan) Apparently the first cd burner under 1000 dollars launched in 95 so couldn't find much from before that.

 

[Karadjgne]

JVC owns the patent on cd burner laser, so as far as branding goes they are all the same. The differences lie in the motor mechanisms, armatures etc so that can be a deciding factor in longetivity or usefulness, but as long as it'll seat and spin the disc correctly, the reader/burner is the same.

 

[Pc6777]

JVC owns the patent on cd burner laser, so as far as branding goes they are all the same. The differences lie in the motor mechanisms, armatures etc so that can be a deciding factor in longetivity or usefulness, but as long as it'll seat and spin the disc correctly, the reader/burner is the same.

interesting, but doesn't sony own the patent on blu ray laser? or does Jvc own that too?

 

[Pc6777]

Discs only last as long as the plastic, so if kept away from UV and moisture, no reason they shouldn't last 20 years.

Best bet is doubling up on the media. If it looks like that format is about to become obsolete to software, drivers, support, then change the media to something current and re-store it. Just not on anything that requires voltage like SSDs etc as they have roughly a 1 year lifespan for data integrity if not powered and trim refreshed.

I can always use a vm of 20h2 in the future or get legacy hardware off ebay if for some reason you cant install 20h2 on future pcs. 20h2 and previous windows builds have built in optical drivers and it works offline without ever having to call home.

 

[Pc6777]

A couple of years ago, I pulled a big stack of home burned DVDs out of a box.
No UV or moisture, they were in big DVD binders.

All had been created between 5-10 years previous.
I got about a 50% success rate in reading them.

Now...these weren't expensive archival M discs.

But how data is stored and backed up/archived depends a lot on the use case.
Who will be accessing these in 20 years?

yea, there's no point in cheap discs with an organic layer, because hard drives are cheaper and more reliable, the only reason i use optical at all is because of the m-discs.