Is M-Disc the ultimate archive medium for SMBs and home users?
This week we talk about this exciting "new" medium for archiving data that is especially attractive to SMBs and home users. It's an optical disc that looks like a DVD and is readable in all Blu-Ray drives, but underneath it's something very different. If you haven't heard of it, then you're in luck! Thanks to Daniel Rosehill, backup anorak and friend of the show, we're going to talk about it – and its competitors on this week's episode! We discuss the good and bad about using all of the following for archiving: paper, SSD, disk, tape, DVD, Blu-Ray, ending with M-Disc. Learn what's wrong with these other mediums, and what's so great about this one in another fun episode of Restore it All!
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Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it all podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host w Curtis Preston, AKA Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And I have with me, my spousal sickness consultant, Prasanna
W. Curtis Preston:Malaiyandi how's it going Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't like to be your spousal sick consultant,
W. Curtis Preston:know, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that means that your spouse is sick.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How's she doing by the way?
W. Curtis Preston:she's not doing too well.
W. Curtis Preston:She said she doesn't have COVID so we got that, but I think she, I think
W. Curtis Preston:she, um, I think she's got the flu, like the good old, the good old flu.
W. Curtis Preston:She, she never gets sick.
W. Curtis Preston:Like me.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't get sick very much and she doesn't get sick very much.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, she's um, you know, without, without medication she's
W. Curtis Preston:popping a a hundred degree fever and, you know, stuff like that, but
W. Curtis Preston:she's, you know, spirits are good,
W. Curtis Preston:but,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think, especially during the pandemic,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the hard part is since everyone's been isolating for the most part,
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:People haven't been getting like the common cold, the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:flu, like the normal stuff that we have.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that things are opening up again,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:people are interacting right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:All the rest of that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like, oh yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:All those things that we used to get.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They're coming back.
W. Curtis Preston:And she's, she's convinced that she got it.
W. Curtis Preston:When I took her to go see, uh, top gun
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hmm.
W. Curtis Preston:which as you know, was my third time seeing it, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you have any comments you wanna give the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:listeners regarding top gun?
W. Curtis Preston:You know, top gun is a hoot.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, I mean, if you, by the time this comes out, if you haven't seen it,
W. Curtis Preston:I don't even know what to tell you because by the time this comes out,
W. Curtis Preston:it might even, well, it'll probably still be in the theaters, but.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, if you haven't seen it at this point, please go see it.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, a, the movie business, believe it or not can use your money.
W. Curtis Preston:and we want the, we want the movie business to survive.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, I'm a big fan of it.
W. Curtis Preston:We, you know, we need escape, right?
W. Curtis Preston:We need, and this is.
W. Curtis Preston:As good as it gets in terms of escapism.
W. Curtis Preston:There's some patriotism in there without being too overt.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:mm-hmm.
W. Curtis Preston:there's, you know, there is an unnamed bad guy country.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And for those folks who've seen the original
Prasanna Malaiyandi:love, the original and think that, oh, sequels never live up to the
W. Curtis Preston:This is, this is one of those rare cases where the
W. Curtis Preston:sequel is better than the original.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, there are a few movies that, that, that accomplish that I
W. Curtis Preston:can think of Godfather Two, um, Toy Story Two, right there.
W. Curtis Preston:There there's like a handful of movies that are as good at if, if not better.
W. Curtis Preston:And this is one where I wholeheartedly would say.
W. Curtis Preston:Better.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a better story.
W. Curtis Preston:It's certainly better.
W. Curtis Preston:Plane scenes.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and all the flight scenes are a thousand times better than I, I watched
W. Curtis Preston:the original top gun the other day, just to sort of compare the plane scenes.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not even close because back then they had to film actual planes.
W. Curtis Preston:right.
W. Curtis Preston:And now they film actual planes too, but they intermix it with special effects
W. Curtis Preston:planes and, and 3d rendered planes.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and they just, they just do things that just aren't possible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that.
W. Curtis Preston:You know that yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That weren't possible back then.
W. Curtis Preston:And the, and the story's really good and the acting's good, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, the characters are all good.
W. Curtis Preston:And, uh, yeah, it's just, it's just a good movie.
W. Curtis Preston:It's certainly my favorite movie of the year.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, I don't know if it's gonna get best picture or anything, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, it's not the kind of movie that wins the best picture, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and, and here's the question for you?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Have you talked about it on the other podcast yet with Jeff Rochlin?
W. Curtis Preston:I, uh, well, I'm waiting for Jeff to see it because that,
W. Curtis Preston:that is a, that is a spoiler full podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So we, you know, we don't pull any punches.
W. Curtis Preston:So we say it right in the beginning, spoilers, you know, spoiler alert.
W. Curtis Preston:And so we haven't talked with him about it yet, but
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So for our listeners who go watch the movie, go check out the other podcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you want to hear
W. Curtis Preston:is the things that entertain us, which Jeff Rochlin
W. Curtis Preston:as the host and I as the co-host.
W. Curtis Preston:So that makes three podcasts that I'm currently on.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of that third podcast, you wanna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:throw out our disclaimer?
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:So yes, my employer is Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, Prasanna's employer is Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not a podcast of either company.
W. Curtis Preston:This is an independent podcast and the, the opinions that you hear
W. Curtis Preston:are ours and be sure you rate us at ratethispodcast.com/restore or.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, just go to, you know, if you're, if, if you're, if you're on apple
W. Curtis Preston:podcast, let's, let's face it.
W. Curtis Preston:Most of you are just scroll down to the bottom.
W. Curtis Preston:You get the stars, click the stars, give the comments and,
W. Curtis Preston:um, you know, and it helps us, it helps other people, uh, find us.
W. Curtis Preston:And then also, if you're interested in the kind of things that, that we're interested
W. Curtis Preston:in, we're gonna talk about something today that this is sort of like a full circle.
W. Curtis Preston:We, we, we got a guest on here.
W. Curtis Preston:Because he is a backup anorak, which is a word for someone that, that is, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, very enthused about these things.
W. Curtis Preston:And we backup anaraks is what we're all about baby.
W. Curtis Preston:And so we had, we had Daniel on Daniel Rose Hill.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then I, interestingly enough, I interacted with him.
W. Curtis Preston:Totally not even realizing I, I was interacting with him on a.
W. Curtis Preston:On a Reddit thread didn't even realize it was, it was Daniel that I
W. Curtis Preston:was that I was interacting with and he didn't realize I was in Reddit.
W. Curtis Preston:And then anyway, so we're the, the thing we're gonna talk about today
W. Curtis Preston:is inspired by the thread that I ended up interacting with on Daniel.
W. Curtis Preston:So this, this was for you buddy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, so yeah, so if you wanna, if you wanna be
W. Curtis Preston:on the podcast, if you wanna give us ideas, whatever, @wcpreston on
W. Curtis Preston:Twitter, or wcurtispreston@gmail, and, uh, you know, we'll make it happen.
W. Curtis Preston:We're all about pleasing the listeners out here.
W. Curtis Preston:, Prasanna Malaiyandi: Since you talk about
W. Curtis Preston:you would like us to talk about, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Tweet us, let us know.
W. Curtis Preston:We are happy to cover to, even if you don't wanna come on the podcast
W. Curtis Preston:to talk about it, let us know.
W. Curtis Preston:We're always looking for topics as well.
W. Curtis Preston:Like this one, this is, this is gonna be an
W. Curtis Preston:interesting topic that it, that we, we haven't, we haven't really covered.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, we've covered bits and pieces of it, but never the focus coverage.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So, yeah, so, and, and by the way, I accept all DMS on Twitter.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you wanna DM me just, just DM away and, um, you know, I don't have to follow
W. Curtis Preston:you like the usual way, so, but, uh, what are we gonna talk about Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:today we're gonna talk about archival storage
W. Curtis Preston:Archival storage.
W. Curtis Preston:And is there a king?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so we're gonna talk
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tape, no SSD!
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Flash disc!
Prasanna Malaiyandi:USB drives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you name it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We'll talk about it today.
W. Curtis Preston:these are all the things, and, and let's just,
W. Curtis Preston:before we get into that, let's just.
W. Curtis Preston:Remind our listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I'll I'm just gonna say let's just cover the topic of archive
W. Curtis Preston:versus backup real quick.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's one It's one of
W. Curtis Preston:your
Prasanna Malaiyandi:favorites.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It was one of my favorite archives.
W. Curtis Preston:Not backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup is not archive, backup and restore.
W. Curtis Preston:That is what most people think of when they think of backups, which
W. Curtis Preston:is, you know, I'm backing up my stuff in case it goes bye-bye.
W. Curtis Preston:In case I get ransomware in case my, my laptop just.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, dies, et cetera.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and that should have a relatively short retention.
W. Curtis Preston:How long your retention for your personal data?
W. Curtis Preston:You know, that's, that's a different discussion.
W. Curtis Preston:Business wise.
W. Curtis Preston:I personally don't think it should be any more than two years if you've
W. Curtis Preston:got retention and, and, and that's only because sometimes there's
W. Curtis Preston:business files or data that's only looked at like once a year.
W. Curtis Preston:And so, because it's only looked at by once a year, you, you might not notice
W. Curtis Preston:that you're missing it until a year later.
W. Curtis Preston:And if you only had three months retention, you wouldn't be able
W. Curtis Preston:to be able to bring it back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or for some compliance purposes as
W. Curtis Preston:Well,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which
W. Curtis Preston:for compliance purposes, I actually think archive
W. Curtis Preston:is a better, a better, um, solution.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:So archive is about.
W. Curtis Preston:Storing data for long periods of time.
W. Curtis Preston:There are various reasons.
W. Curtis Preston:One might do that.
W. Curtis Preston:One of them is compliance reasons, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You might have to archive all.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you're in the financial trading business, for example, you are required
W. Curtis Preston:by the SEC to archive, to record and archive all customer communications.
W. Curtis Preston:So chat messages, phone messages.
W. Curtis Preston:Emails, all of that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you're required to archive that for, I believe, seven years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it's seven years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:What's that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I believe it's seven years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:HIPAA requires you to restore stuff for the patient life plus something.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, I don't remember the details there, but the, which
W. Curtis Preston:I always wondered about that.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, how do you get notified of when your patient died?
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:Today, what we're gonna primarily talk about is about personal archive
W. Curtis Preston:because business archive, it requires, I, I think, I think my differences for
W. Curtis Preston:business archive would be different than personal archive because although I think
W. Curtis Preston:everything I'm gonna say, you can learn from it for, for a business archive, but.
W. Curtis Preston:One of the big things that's gonna come into the discussion here is cost.
W. Curtis Preston:And with a business you can, you can pretty easily have a cost
Prasanna Malaiyandi:justify.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:To, to, to spend a lot more money than the
W. Curtis Preston:average user is gonna gonna do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so this is, this is about.
W. Curtis Preston:The stuff that you really don't wanna say bye to, right?
W. Curtis Preston:This is about your, I don't know, financial records.
W. Curtis Preston:This is about your pictures of your kids.
W. Curtis Preston:I lost some pictures of my kids.
W. Curtis Preston:I hate that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:I lost some pictures before I got really serious about
W. Curtis Preston:archiving my own personal data.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I lost some pictures of some like trips to Europe, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:these days with smartphones and mirrorless
Prasanna Malaiyandi:cameras and everything else, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're shooting 4k video.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:These are lots of data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You wanna make sure you don't lose that footage, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And that, and that's exactly what happened with me was I switched the
W. Curtis Preston:medium that I was using to create.
W. Curtis Preston:I switched, you know, I went from back then.
W. Curtis Preston:You remember, we used to have cameras
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:when I was moving from, from a to B I didn't, I wasn't,
W. Curtis Preston:I, I just got busy on the new thing and I didn't think about transferring
W. Curtis Preston:the old stuff into the new thing.
W. Curtis Preston:And before I knew it, it was all gone.
W. Curtis Preston:So this is about that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, And so we're gonna talk about the options.
W. Curtis Preston:And I do think there is a, a clear winner here for the home user and,
W. Curtis Preston:um, which if you're looking at the title of this, you probably already
W. Curtis Preston:know what I think the clear winner is, but we should talk about why.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So let's talk about the option.
W. Curtis Preston:So the first option I would say is disk, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Can I make a crazy suggestion even before disk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Printouts.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just because, just because
W. Curtis Preston:for financial records,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or, or even pictures.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Having negatives, just because we did have that discussion
Prasanna Malaiyandi:with, um, Stuart Liddle right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And he said, one of his ways that he had to deal with recovery was data entry
Prasanna Malaiyandi:because they had printouts back then.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think a lot of people do forget that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Having a physical copy and storing that, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Be it negatives or whatever else is actually a way to archive.
W. Curtis Preston:It is, I think it's
W. Curtis Preston:well, we're just, we're discussing we're discussing options, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not practical, not scalable, but
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, it's better.
W. Curtis Preston:Like if you had printouts of maybe your most cherished photos, I
W. Curtis Preston:don't know if you'd create a, I mean, I I'd need, I've got way too
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you need a full, you need a house to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:store all the photos, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But I, you know, financial documents and things like that, I'm actually
W. Curtis Preston:in the process of converting my, my paper, financial documents
W. Curtis Preston:into, you know, um, digital ones and then I have to store those.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But, and so I think of the paper option as probably the most, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:what's the word, um, Flammable
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You have to worry about flames.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You have to worry about water damage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You have to worry about all those other things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And therefore, probably not the best medium
W. Curtis Preston:and if you have a bunch of paper getting it out of your house and
W. Curtis Preston:time of fire is just not gonna happen.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so from a digital perspective, there are.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, there's some mediums that really aren't accessible to the
W. Curtis Preston:home user or even used anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:Like we used to use microfish and things like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I would probably also even throw
W. Curtis Preston:but which kind of tape,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:tape
W. Curtis Preston:well, we're gonna get to LTO.
W. Curtis Preston:I I'm, but, but the first one I wanted to talk about, which is
W. Curtis Preston:the one that most people probably think about is portable disc.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I'm gonna, we're we're gonna.
W. Curtis Preston:And I know the one you're gonna ask about and that's next, but I'm just
W. Curtis Preston:talking about regular USB disc and I think that's a horrible archive.
W. Curtis Preston:Medium.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:SP portable USB drives, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, flash drives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thumb drives.
W. Curtis Preston:thumb, like, you know, these little things, little
W. Curtis Preston:spinning, hard drives, connected via USB.
W. Curtis Preston:I think they are.
W. Curtis Preston:Like least reliable things.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:with you.
W. Curtis Preston:you can disagree.
W. Curtis Preston:You're wrong
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it depends on the drives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So in my mind, I agree that because of everything else we've talked about, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The fact that you have a spinning dish, you're probably keeping that dish right
Prasanna Malaiyandi:next to where you keep everything else.
W. Curtis Preston:I you're talking about backup.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm talking about archive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, and because you need to store it for long and disks
Prasanna Malaiyandi:do periodically have issues.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When you don't use it for long periods of time, I agree that that's probably
Prasanna Malaiyandi:not the best medium, if you wanna keep a piece of data for a hundred years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:However, when I think about like what's available, what's easily accessible.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, and the fact that just like in tape, in the past, you would
Prasanna Malaiyandi:copy things over from one to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I could see a case where yes, I am using disk, but I'm only
Prasanna Malaiyandi:gonna keep it for four years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then I'm sort of going to move my archive if you will forward.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know you don't like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know you don't like that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know you don't like that, Curtis, but I'm just talking from a practical sense.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I just, I just think the fact
W. Curtis Preston:that, that you have bit rot.
W. Curtis Preston:The wor the worst bit rot that we're gonna have is on a, on a portable hard drive.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, the, the bits are really, really small.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the stuff is hot.
W. Curtis Preston:You can probably accelerate that by not having it powered on
W. Curtis Preston:all the time and by accelerate.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, I mean, um, increased the amount of time that it's not gonna have bit rot,
W. Curtis Preston:um, but I, I just, I just think given the other options that we're gonna discuss.
W. Curtis Preston:The only thing that a hard drive offers is ubiquity and inexpensive, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I, I wanna challenge your point about bit rot I don't think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's the worst device for bit rot
W. Curtis Preston:what's the worst device
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I would actually say for that, I'd
Prasanna Malaiyandi:probably put a USB flash drive.
W. Curtis Preston:right, because that's gotta be powered on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep,
W. Curtis Preston:All the time.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So SSD
W. Curtis Preston:archive?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:just, no, it is not.
W. Curtis Preston:This is, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks for bringing it up.
W. Curtis Preston:That's why I didn't even put it on the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, but, but people would cons yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:People would consider it.
W. Curtis Preston:And why, why, why isn't that?
W. Curtis Preston:Why, why is that the case?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well, You shouldn't use it because like you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:mentioned, SSD needs to be periodically powered on in order to refresh the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:bits that are stored on the disc.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And if you don't power it on, then it just slowly vanishes over time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think I haven't found actual numbers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I wanna say they say you should power it on at least like every
Prasanna Malaiyandi:six months, at least at the minimum
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in order
W. Curtis Preston:that just sounds like a horrible, you know, I, I want an archive.
W. Curtis Preston:I want somebody can set.
W. Curtis Preston:I want, I want somebody can ship it to somebody, put it on a
W. Curtis Preston:shelf and forget about it, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So, yeah, that's bad SSD or flash, uh, USB
W. Curtis Preston:right,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:don't use either one.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, and then right after disk is the, is RDX by
W. Curtis Preston:the way, which is actually disk.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just that it's designed for this.
W. Curtis Preston:It's designed for swapping in and, and all of that.
W. Curtis Preston:I still don't think it's a good archive, medium.
W. Curtis Preston:I think it's better than just a regular USB disc drive, but, um, It's slightly
W. Curtis Preston:more expensive, but again, I did, again, we're talking about archive, not backup.
W. Curtis Preston:We're talking about long-term storage.
W. Curtis Preston:I think disk is a bad idea for long-term storage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And for people wanting to know more about RDX, go
Prasanna Malaiyandi:listen to episode 1 56 data protection warrior explains LTO and RDX.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We had Pat Mayock from HPE.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Talk about, uh, both of those technologies.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I, if, if you wanna use disk as a backup medium, for example, I
W. Curtis Preston:think RDX is a great solution.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it it's much less expensive than LTO, which would be the next choice.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's a much better solution than that for the home user.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's, it's a lot more.
W. Curtis Preston:Portable it's made to be portable.
W. Curtis Preston:It's made to be swapping in and out and all that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:I think it's a great choice for backup.
W. Curtis Preston:I just don't think that disc in any form is a good idea for archive.
W. Curtis Preston:So the next thing that I think that we need to talk about is, is LTO.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, there are other tape drives, but there are even more expensive than
W. Curtis Preston:LTO . So LTO would be, there are, you know, I, I should have done that.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna look it up right now.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna go to Amazon.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah, and I think for LTO, it's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi:necessarily the cost of the media.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's a concern.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's the cost of getting started by purchasing that tape drive in order to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be
W. Curtis Preston:is why I'm pulling it up.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:This is really funny.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it's like $1,800.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um,
W. Curtis Preston:no, when I searched on LTO tape drive, the first, the first two
W. Curtis Preston:drives that came up were RDX tape drives.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so in LTO, I'm looking for maybe an older LTO.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, I mean, they're like, they're like a thousand dollars, like that's,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, uh, that's a, a new, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Here's an LTO six internal drive.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so the, the drive is going to be very expensive.
W. Curtis Preston:The media will be inexpensive.
W. Curtis Preston:This is where it would have to be a, what I would think of as a power home user.
W. Curtis Preston:You need to have a whole lot of data.
W. Curtis Preston:This is for the guys on the data, hoarder plat the data hoarders
W. Curtis Preston:plat, uh, subreddit, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Hey, shout out to the, the data hoarders, subreddit, those guys, uh, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:They store an awful lot of data.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and when you're storing hundreds of gigabytes or, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:even terabytes LTO, baby, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The, the cost per gigabytes starts to come down as you store a whole
W. Curtis Preston:bunch, a whole bunch of data.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's about, you know, when you start buying a bunch of
W. Curtis Preston:hard drives that are that big,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The cost
W. Curtis Preston:start approaching, you start approaching
W. Curtis Preston:that cost of that tape drive.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you can get over that or what some people on the, on that sub right
W. Curtis Preston:to talk about, Buying a used LTO tape drive, um, on, you know, the, uh, what's
W. Curtis Preston:that place eBay and, you know, um, and you can get, you can get one for under.
W. Curtis Preston:Probably a few hundred bucks.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I'm not gonna any support or anything, but anyway, why do I like LTO over disk?
W. Curtis Preston:And again, it's about, it is much better design as a long term storage medium.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the magnetic bits are larger.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the, the medium is colder or, or less warm.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and it therefore.
W. Curtis Preston:Will be subject to bit rot at a much lower rate than the, than a disk drive.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and if you wanna know what we're talking about, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:look for the, what was that?
W. Curtis Preston:The tape drive designer schools, Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Back up on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tape designers.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Episode 111 tape designer schools.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Backup on tape with Joe Jurneke.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, uh, that one really discusses bit rot.
W. Curtis Preston:What it is, why it is and why tape is much like multiple orders of magnitude,
W. Curtis Preston:better at it than, um, than disk it's.
W. Curtis Preston:The, are challenges with.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tape.
W. Curtis Preston:Tape as a long term storage medium.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:You can argue that it's difficult to verify.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I would say it's not that difficult if you, if you go with the, with
W. Curtis Preston:the LTFS format, for example, you can plug it in, put together a, a
W. Curtis Preston:little program that goes in there and does a check sum on all your files.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not rocket science.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just, it's not, doesn't happen.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mount it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mm-hmm easy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Automat.
W. Curtis Preston:Automatically, well, it does auto.
W. Curtis Preston:It does happen automatically or can happen automatically if you're a business
W. Curtis Preston:user and you have a large tape library, you can actually tell it to go in and
W. Curtis Preston:compare all of its check sums to itself.
W. Curtis Preston:And you can tell it to do that on a regular basis.
W. Curtis Preston:That's something that a home user just not gonna be able to
W. Curtis Preston:do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The other thing I would say about tape drives is you have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to be a little bit more careful in how.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In how you handle it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't put it next to a magnet.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But the same thing will apply for discs as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But you just have to be a little bit more careful where you put it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Don't put it on like a shelf with a magnet lamp underneath, because that will
W. Curtis Preston:A magnet lamp.
W. Curtis Preston:What's a magnet lamp.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:know, the lamps with the base that's magnetic that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you put to the underside of a shelf.
W. Curtis Preston:Sure.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You never.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So like in offices, like you'll have like metal shelves.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then, so this is what we used to have at one of the places.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In fact, Steven manly, uh, used to talk about this, cuz he used to work
Prasanna Malaiyandi:on NDMP and tape drives, but he would basically do tape backups, put the tape
Prasanna Malaiyandi:on a shelf and then try to do restores.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And he'd always end up with bit rot, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The tape wouldn't restore properly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It turns out
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That rot.
W. Curtis Preston:That was
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or it would magnetism would flip the bits, but it's because
Prasanna Malaiyandi:he would place the tape on the shelf and below the shelf, they had these lights
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that would snap into the shelf by magnets.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you can illuminate your desk.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that would basically cause the flipping of the bits
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know about this story.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna have to call BS on this story.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna call Steven and
W. Curtis Preston:tell him, I, it is just, it takes a really powerful magnet, but you know, all you
W. Curtis Preston:gotta do is mess a couple of bits up,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:So yeah, the, you, know, you have to keep it
W. Curtis Preston:outta heat, keep it out of sunlight and all that kind of stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:But I, I think that's true of many of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it's more durable than like hard disk for
W. Curtis Preston:More durable and hard disc and designed to be shipped around.
W. Curtis Preston:And there's no,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Spinning
W. Curtis Preston:uh, technology, it's just literally just a spindle.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and yes, it is, um, you know, rated for 30 years and
W. Curtis Preston:I'll, I'll stand behind that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, uh, and yes, you'll be able to get an LTO tape drive in 30 years.
W. Curtis Preston:Yours might die, but you get another one it's not,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's backwards compatible at all the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:rest as well.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like you don't need to get the exact same.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not like a zip drive right.
W. Curtis Preston:Where they don't make them anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:zip jazz drives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I remember
W. Curtis Preston:you can, you can still buy nine track tape drives.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, they're, they're refurbished and stuff like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Not nine track.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the real it's real.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, that's what I meant when I said nine track tape drives not.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Those were eight track
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Those were eight track.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:The ones that you put in your car?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the nine track were the, the big real reels that you see in all
W. Curtis Preston:the old movies, but you can still buy nine track, uh, tape drives.
W. Curtis Preston:You'll be able to buy LTO drives 50 years from now.
W. Curtis Preston:It's it's not crazy that that would
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The nice part with going with like a standard like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that, because they ensure that it's continuing to be supported versus some
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of the other technologies, which is more proprietary, which is once they go out
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of business, you're a little screwed.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so the next is, and I'm gonna put them sort of, I'm not even gonna
W. Curtis Preston:include CD, cuz it's just so small, but we'll talk about, and not, not regular
W. Curtis Preston:DVD, but talk about Bluray right as an archive, medium and, well, well actually
W. Curtis Preston:we're talking about consumer here.
W. Curtis Preston:So before, before I talk about Bluray, I'm gonna talk.
W. Curtis Preston:Nope.
W. Curtis Preston:Darn it.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with my original plan.
W. Curtis Preston:Talk about Blu-Ray.
W. Curtis Preston:So Blu-Ray is like, I think these are in order of betterness.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, I just gonna say, yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:And the, the nice thing about Blu-Ray is that it's
W. Curtis Preston:not subject to magnetic bit rot.
W. Curtis Preston:But the way it works, it is an organic.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, die that is recorded on via lasers
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's why you get like the etchings on the back of
W. Curtis Preston:right, right.
W. Curtis Preston:And it does have, or it can have bit rot and there could
W. Curtis Preston:be like separations of things.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not a perfect medium.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I think.
W. Curtis Preston:And I think it, I think it's even more susceptible to
W. Curtis Preston:environmental issues than tape,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think, especially when it comes to like light
Prasanna Malaiyandi:UV, other things like that, it could cause it to break down much quicker
W. Curtis Preston:right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:than they say it lasts.
W. Curtis Preston:It is very inexpensive.
W. Curtis Preston:You can get a, you know, a Blu-Ray writeable Blu-Ray drive for under
W. Curtis Preston:50 bucks and Blu-Ray discs are super
Prasanna Malaiyandi:start
W. Curtis Preston:cheap.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:And
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I think they're about 20 and I think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:they're about 25 gigs, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Per blue radius, 25 to
W. Curtis Preston:I think that's, yeah, I think that's the biggest that they come.
W. Curtis Preston:And the, just the challenge of that is, you know, how long.
W. Curtis Preston:It will last, you can have it tested.
W. Curtis Preston:You can easily just like the tape.
W. Curtis Preston:You can bring it in and, you know, have it tested.
W. Curtis Preston:You can also make multiple copies in case one of them goes bad because
W. Curtis Preston:the media itself is, so this, this is similar to the tape where you can make
W. Curtis Preston:multiple copies and you can distribute them, put them in different places.
W. Curtis Preston:Don't have them in your house.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, if your house burns down or gets flooded or whatever your
W. Curtis Preston:precious stuff can be somewhere else.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, The what I was, what I was thinking about talking about, and I'm gonna
W. Curtis Preston:talk about it just really quickly.
W. Curtis Preston:There is something, um, that called the, the Sony, uh, optical disc archive.
W. Curtis Preston:And it is, it takes that concept of a, you know, of a.
W. Curtis Preston:It actually started with Blu-Ray it now uses a different technology
W. Curtis Preston:inside, but what it does is it puts multiple of these platters inside
W. Curtis Preston:something that kind of looks like a tape
W. Curtis Preston:and it works kind of like internally it works kind of like a disc drive
W. Curtis Preston:in that you put one of these,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:cartridges.
W. Curtis Preston:cartridges.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that's right.
W. Curtis Preston:Cartridges into an optical disc archive, uh, player.
W. Curtis Preston:And.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and it's reading and writing from them at, uh, you know, simultaneously,
W. Curtis Preston:which is how it can have much higher write speeds than a typical Blu-Ray, uh, disc.
W. Curtis Preston:So the there's only one problem with the Sony optical disc archive.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you know what one costs?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, I was looking at B and H photo.
W. Curtis Preston:It's pretty much the only place you can buy it, by the way.
W. Curtis Preston:That's another problem is that it's only made by Sony done.
W. Curtis Preston:If Sony decides to get outta this business, they're the
W. Curtis Preston:only one I know making it.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's not like LTO, there's multiple companies making it.
W. Curtis Preston:So if they decide to get outta the business, that's the end
W. Curtis Preston:of the world, the, uh, it's uh, roughly $10,000 for a new.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the
W. Curtis Preston:For the drive.
W. Curtis Preston:And then the, the media is like, It's I'd say it.
W. Curtis Preston:It's it's it's approaching tape prices, not as cheap as tape somewhere between
W. Curtis Preston:somewhere between tape and RDX from, from a price per gigabyte standpoint.
W. Curtis Preston:It let's just say once you've paid $10,000 for the drive, who
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The media's gonna matter.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:media's not gonna matter.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:Uh, so I don't see that as an option for the home user and, uh, by the
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:way, this whole, this whole thing, by the way, was caused by Daniel
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:asking about the optical disc archive.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:On, um, on Reddit.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:And I was like, dude, he's like, is there any way I can buy one of these?
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:We're like, well, yeah, you can go to B and H photo, just take out a loan.
W. Curtis Preston:
Speaker:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, and just given where he's located in Israel, dealing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:with all the import duty taxes and whether he can get the equipment or not.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's another can of worms
W. Curtis Preston:I didn't even think about that aspect.
W. Curtis Preston:So, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But before we jump to, I think the next to the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:one we actually wanna talk about, I wanna ask you, where do you think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:cloud fits into all of this cloud?
W. Curtis Preston:Not at all.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Hear me.
W. Curtis Preston:you asked me a question.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:no, like you have AWS's glacier deep archive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You have other storage in the cloud intended for archival storage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Do you think that the home users should consider those as a place to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:store their precious data, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That they want to archive and keep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Understanding that yes, bringing it back to from the cloud will be costly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They will be paying sort of a monthly fee for storing the data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They have to worry about how they get the data up there in the first place.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Maybe they use like a device, like AWS's snow cone to move the data
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to the cloud, all of these things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But we haven't talked about that yet.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so before we get to the next topic, I thought I'd pick your brain.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:That, that's a, that's a, it's a good point.
W. Curtis Preston:And.
W. Curtis Preston:I guess it, it, it depends on the, the amount of the data.
W. Curtis Preston:If you're a very small home user and you got like, you know, a handful
W. Curtis Preston:of gigabytes of this stuff, putting it up, there's nothing wrong with
W. Curtis Preston:putting it into, uh, the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:And I would definitely use something like glacier deep archive.
W. Curtis Preston:And the idea would be that you hope you don't ever have to pull it out
W. Curtis Preston:of there because it will be both.
W. Curtis Preston:It will take a while and you will pay dearly to pull it out.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and that, that's also not the only option out there.
W. Curtis Preston:There are a bunch of them out there.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, just, just take a look at them, but the.
W. Curtis Preston:The concern that most of the people that I'm, that I think I'm speaking
W. Curtis Preston:to today is that for them, for the whole user, they don't like the
W. Curtis Preston:loss of control that the cloud has.
W. Curtis Preston:They don't like the fact that, you know, they're only paying a, a small
W. Curtis Preston:fee per month to Amazon or to whomever.
W. Curtis Preston:And that, that means that they don't have a lot of, of.
W. Curtis Preston:To use a Seinfeld.
W. Curtis Preston:They have no hand, right.
W. Curtis Preston:To use a Seinfeld reference.
W. Curtis Preston:They like the idea of having it again.
W. Curtis Preston:This is an archive.
W. Curtis Preston:This is my precious memories.
W. Curtis Preston:They like the idea of having it in their hot little hands.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But, but, but, but, but yes, I agree that archive
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's good to have in your hot little hands, but wouldn't you want something
Prasanna Malaiyandi:off site as well, potentially for your archive, especially if this
Prasanna Malaiyandi:is your precious things, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Your house burns down.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so.
W. Curtis Preston:There's nothing wrong with having a copy there.
W. Curtis Preston:If you can afford it and you can get it there and all of that stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, It's just that the whole point here is that it's going to be a really long time.
W. Curtis Preston:And I think over time, you're gonna be paying an awfully long, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:People
W. Curtis Preston:year archive for somebody,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:people get surprised about the cost, even if it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:seems like a very, very small amount as your data grows, your costs grow.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then trying to get that data back ever becomes very, very expensive.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Cloud for backup and recovery.
W. Curtis Preston:Absolutely right.
W. Curtis Preston:For, for the home user, for all the users, for all the things I think cloud backup
W. Curtis Preston:and recovery, cloud disaster recovery, I think that's perfect use for the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I get concerned when we start talking about storing stuff there
W. Curtis Preston:for 50 years because, um, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You could afford that Sony optical disc at that
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, you might be.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:You might just take out a loan on that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and by the way, any of the medium, any of the media that we are
W. Curtis Preston:talking about, I think you should be making multiple copies and you
W. Curtis Preston:should be shipping some of it offsite.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So we're definitely in agreement there.
W. Curtis Preston:So I wanna talk about the thing that, that, that I, that I know that Daniel's
W. Curtis Preston:been looking at a lot lately and, and that is, and, and actually I have to
W. Curtis Preston:thank Daniel for, I wasn't even aware of this format and that's why, that's
W. Curtis Preston:why I wanted to talk about it here.
W. Curtis Preston:And it's called M disk.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the original.
W. Curtis Preston:Name came from the company.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, what was it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:NCIA I think
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:Millenniata, I think is
Prasanna Malaiyandi:there,
W. Curtis Preston:was millennia.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There you go.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, so I'm gonna put the bad news first.
W. Curtis Preston:So first off, I think it's an amazing archive medium, and I think it
W. Curtis Preston:solves so many of the issues that we talked about, um, up to this point.
W. Curtis Preston:The, so let me talk about the bad first.
W. Curtis Preston:The actual company that came out with, with M-Disc is out of business.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the, the M the Millenniata in M-Disc went out of business in 2018,
W. Curtis Preston:but, um, it looks like the, the folks that, that created M-Disc created
W. Curtis Preston:another company that it's one of these things where, you know, the company
W. Curtis Preston:went outta the business, but the people went on to form this other company.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you go to like, I think it's M-Disc.com.
W. Curtis Preston:Is that what it is?
W. Curtis Preston:Let's see.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:M disc that's disc with the C M-Disc.com.
W. Curtis Preston:It's the same people that started it is just not the company,
W. Curtis Preston:not the original company.
W. Curtis Preston:So first off, what is it?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it, it, is, it, it, if you just look at it with, you know, you
W. Curtis Preston:just saw it, you would think you're looking at a blue Ray or a DVD,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's just an optical disc and looks exactly the
W. Curtis Preston:it's yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Same form factor, but it it's apparently close to transparent, which is kind
W. Curtis Preston:of an interesting, which given what it actually is, I, I find that fascinating.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:same form
W. Curtis Preston:But the different, the big difference is instead of using
W. Curtis Preston:an organic dye, they use inorganic material and essentially the, the way
W. Curtis Preston:they, it is proprietary and it is secret, but it is essentially they're, they're
W. Curtis Preston:essentially describing it as stone, right?
W. Curtis Preston:They're like it's etched in stone.
W. Curtis Preston:It it's an inorganic material.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, That does not have the bit rot issues over time that the organic dyes do that,
W. Curtis Preston:that the other optical platters use.
W. Curtis Preston:And the amazing thing is it is writeable in most modern
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Blu-Ray but
W. Curtis Preston:if they, if they can write a DVD, a Blu-Ray generally
W. Curtis Preston:modern drives can write an M-Disc.
W. Curtis Preston:Having said that I, I, you know, I don't know what the full compatibility
W. Curtis Preston:is and your mileage may vary and all
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But I think it can be played in any.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Device in any drive that can read a Blu-Ray
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Which is fascinating.
W. Curtis Preston:This is one of those things where this is like the ultimate
W. Curtis Preston:sort of backwards compatible.
W. Curtis Preston:How did they make something that's completely different, but also compatible
W. Curtis Preston:with what was already out there?
W. Curtis Preston:That's I mean that kudos to the folks behind M-Disc and you know, maybe we'll
W. Curtis Preston:get, maybe we'll get them on here.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think Daniel had actually done a podcast, I believe with
Prasanna Malaiyandi:one of the guys who created M disk.
W. Curtis Preston:Well then we got, we gotta get that guy.
W. Curtis Preston:If Daniel can get that
W. Curtis Preston:guy, we can get that guy.
W. Curtis Preston:We know Daniel, Daniel hook us, hook us up, man.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but the, so.
W. Curtis Preston:so so that's the big deal is that it's this inorganic material that's
W. Curtis Preston:supposed to last a thousand years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And this has been, I think I read that it had been
Prasanna Malaiyandi:tested in France by some government agency, the D O D in the US.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They use this for thing, data that needs to be archived and stored.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So it's not like, oh yeah, here's this fancy tech and no, one's proven it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:out, but it's actually being used by agencies which have strict requirements.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and there, there have been some, some independent reviews of it.
W. Curtis Preston:And like there's some guy that like torched it and submerged it and stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:This guy, microscopic uk.org, UK, that's quite the mouthful there.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, he did a review of it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I'll, I'll say this, you again, I'll say multiple things.
W. Curtis Preston:When you, when you kind of look at it, like if you're just, if you're
W. Curtis Preston:looking at it for the, for the, with brand new eyes, the claims sound good.
W. Curtis Preston:The website is the website.
W. Curtis Preston:The review website is ma.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so you might like, because when you, when you go to
W. Curtis Preston:mdisc-com, for example, they haven't had a blog post in six years.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, they've got a couple of links that are bad.
W. Curtis Preston:So even the guys that are have taken over it, they haven't
W. Curtis Preston:done necessarily the best.
W. Curtis Preston:So why do I think this is such a good medium go, let's go back to LTO.
W. Curtis Preston:There are multiple companies that make m-Disc compatible drives
W. Curtis Preston:and multiple companies that make M-Disc compatible media.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Mm-hmm
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and they're companies that you already know, right.
W. Curtis Preston:If you just go to Amazon and you type in M-Disc drive, you'll find a
W. Curtis Preston:number of companies that, that make the drives and you'll find, um, and
W. Curtis Preston:by the way, the latest M-Disc media is actually a hundred gigabyte,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It is more pricey though, but it is there,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:The, um, I'm finding.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So like, um, 20,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think it's like
W. Curtis Preston:yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:25.
W. Curtis Preston:Let's see.
W. Curtis Preston:25, 25, 25 gigabyte discs is $65 and 25 100 gigabyte discs is $283.
W. Curtis Preston:That's a, but that's, that's two and a half terabytes.
W. Curtis Preston:Did I get that right?
W. Curtis Preston:That's two and a half terabytes of storage.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Now, again, if you're a data hoarder and you've got 30 terabytes
W. Curtis Preston:of storage, you're this is not for you.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't think this is for you.
W. Curtis Preston:This is for that person who has a bunch of stuff you can buy.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know what the smallest chunk is.
W. Curtis Preston:You can buy, but you can buy a drive for, you know, around a hundred bucks.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they look to be a little bit more expensive than just your average.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, BDR drive, but, and you can buy the media and there are several drives.
W. Curtis Preston:And again, the, the drive it's made backwards compatible.
W. Curtis Preston:That's really important thing it's made back.
W. Curtis Preston:So even if tomorrow, all the new media stop being made and all the drives that
W. Curtis Preston:could write to it, stop being made.
W. Curtis Preston:The fact that you can read it in the existing Blu-Ray drives,
W. Curtis Preston:I think is says everything.
W. Curtis Preston:And that's what I like about this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh,
W. Curtis Preston:What do you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, I, yeah, no, I'm glad that Daniel kind of pointed us to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it, cuz yeah, I had never heard about this before, but it is very, very fascinating.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And if it could live up to the fact that yeah, it doesn't degrade over time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like I, I was going through and cleaning up the house and I just had so many
Prasanna Malaiyandi:CDs and DVDs lying around the house.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm like, there is no way that this stuff will be able to be read anymore
Prasanna Malaiyandi:because they're all like 20 years old.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:When's the last time you tried to read a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:20 year old CD or DVD Curtis?
W. Curtis Preston:Are we talking commercial DVDs
W. Curtis Preston:or home written DVDs?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, a little while ago, actually.
W. Curtis Preston:I remember pulling out some stuff that I had written.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Did it actually, were you
W. Curtis Preston:uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:were you able to actually read it?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it's like those sort of things.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like how much longer will they last?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know what the Blu-Ray, I don't know what Blu-Ray are, are rated at.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I think DVDs, not Blu-Ray DVDs, DVDs are rated better, but,
W. Curtis Preston:um, but they, you know, they're so much smaller and, you know, um,
W. Curtis Preston:etcetera, et cetera, but I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I like the idea that it's an inorganic layer.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I like the idea that there are multiple vendors that sell the media.
W. Curtis Preston:There are multiple vendors that sell the drives.
W. Curtis Preston:So it's more at this point, the founders, I, I guess they're
W. Curtis Preston:probably living off licensing, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz they're not, they don't sell the company that they're essentially,
W. Curtis Preston:as far as I can tell they're they're just marketing the idea,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah, and
W. Curtis Preston:M-Discs.com.
W. Curtis Preston:mdis.com.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and I think that's probably the challenge to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:getting consumers, to actually adopt this technology because most people
Prasanna Malaiyandi:don't even know M-Disc exists.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Just like
W. Curtis Preston:Well, that's about to change after this episode!
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It exists.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but I think right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's probably a fault on the company side.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's if people knew, I'm sure more people would be looking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:into it as a potential option.
W. Curtis Preston:They can start by updating their website and fixing
W. Curtis Preston:broken links and you know, and not having six year old blogs that actually
W. Curtis Preston:don't really talk about their medium.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, the blog is, I don't know, it's a nice looking site,
W. Curtis Preston:but the blog is not the best part.
W. Curtis Preston:The,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:folks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you need some ideas, reach out to us, we will be happy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to provide you some input.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, absolutely.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so far you've received unsolicited input already.
W. Curtis Preston:but your website looks, but I love the, I love the idea and I
W. Curtis Preston:think that this is the ultimate archiving medium for the home user.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the, I, I haven't found it.
W. Curtis Preston:I I'm sure there's somewhere that you could probably buy a
W. Curtis Preston:handful of these discs that you don't always have to buy 25 pack.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know if that's the case.
W. Curtis Preston:It it's probably way more expensive for a disc to do it that way.
W. Curtis Preston:Just like it is with Blu-Rays.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:But I just, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I just really like the fact, again, the fact that they made it backwards
W. Curtis Preston:compatible with the regular Blu-Ray drives the fact that there's
W. Curtis Preston:multiple companies that make the media and one of which is verbatim.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Which is, you know, that there's multiple companies that, that whose
W. Curtis Preston:names that you recognize and there's multiple drives that to, to write it.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you, if you're interested in the hundred gigabyte disc, make
W. Curtis Preston:sure that the drive that you buy supports a hundred gigabyte disc.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know if all drives support that.
W. Curtis Preston:So anyway, I think this is a good discussion.
W. Curtis Preston:I hope, I hope, I hope you guys, I hope you enjoyed this Daniel.
W. Curtis Preston:This was this literally all for you.
W. Curtis Preston:This was, this was for an audience of one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:uh, hopefully we have more than more people in that
W. Curtis Preston:listening, but, um, So thanks Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks for the chat.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:now I'm gonna go think about my archive strategy.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And thanks to the listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:We're nothing without you.
W. Curtis Preston:And remember
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to subscribe.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you can restore it all.
W. Curtis Preston:There you go.
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