M-disc founder explains how it keeps data for 1000 years
This week we have Barry Lunt, one of two founders of Milleniata, the creators of M-Disc. The company may be gone, but the format lives on. Most modern DVD and Blu-Ray drives can write to M-Disc, and Verbatim still sells it. Barry explains to us why they decided to make M-Disc, and why it's different than any other optical product. He also offers a shocker: a study done many years ago that shows that recordable DVDs are nowhere near as good at holding onto data as they claim. There is a lot of good info in this episode. Hope you like it.
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Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it
W. Curtis Preston:All podcast, I'm your host, W.
W. Curtis Preston:Curtis president, AKA, Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And I have with me as always the guy who's doing a really poor job of talking me out
W. Curtis Preston:of buying a Tesla Prasanna Malaiyandi.
W. Curtis Preston:it going Prasanna?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now, to be fair, I never tallked you into buying it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm just
W. Curtis Preston:I told you that your job was to talk me out of buying a.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, I think it's for reasons that you want right where you wanna try some
Prasanna Malaiyandi:new technology, it could make sense.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Plus, I know that you've been also a little stressed about your
Prasanna Malaiyandi:car that you currently drive.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:There's that?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's not sure, not sure how long it's gonna be.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and well, and also I'm.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm getting the case of FOMO, cuz I got a new car for my wife.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, you know, maybe it's just, it's not FOMO.
W. Curtis Preston:It's just, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It is a bit of it is well, it's only jealousy and FOMO.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you never get to steal the car from her, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm sure she'll get many more miles on it than I will.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:or you should tell by the way, it's about six weeks delayed.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Um, don't worry about it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It'll eventually be
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, well, honey, I, yeah, sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:The, uh, the car's not gonna be here.
W. Curtis Preston:It's um, it's yeah, it's
Prasanna Malaiyandi:they had an issue with shipping.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm sorry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And don't worry about that new car that's in their driveway.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's totally fine.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's someone else's car don't know whose that is.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Why does my new car have 10,000 miles it already?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:The Tesla is like a LTO, uh, tape drive.
W. Curtis Preston:Like it costs a lot to get into it, but then the media is cheap.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:that is probably true.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, it's a little bit like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you, you just made a reference to LTO tape with the Tesla.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can, I, I can see people like turning over and watch Elon
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Musk is now going to tweet you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:being like, I cannot believe you compared.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I think, um, Elon paying any attention to me is highly
W. Curtis Preston:unlikely, but, you know, we'll see.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:for our listeners, if you feel like you want to get Elon
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to respond to Curtis about this, please tag him on Twitter, along with Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And let's see if we can get Elon to respond.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Good luck with that.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, that, that wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't hurt the, uh, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:the listenership of the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm sure.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, yeah, so I compared a Tesla to an LTO tape drive.
W. Curtis Preston:And I think it's a pretty good comparison, but, uh, speaking of inexpensive media,
W. Curtis Preston:we have, uh, an exciting guest today.
W. Curtis Preston:We, we have talked about, uh, M-Disc before.
W. Curtis Preston:Our guest today is a full professor at BYU, having been there since
W. Curtis Preston:1992, uh, also having taught at Utah State and Snow College.
W. Curtis Preston:Prior to that.
W. Curtis Preston:He was a design engineer for IBM in Arizona.
W. Curtis Preston:He is one of two co-founders of M-Disc, which we have talked about
W. Curtis Preston:on this, uh, podcast a couple times, welcome to the podcast, Barry Lunt.
Barry Lunt:Thank you very much.
Barry Lunt:Good to be with you guys.
W. Curtis Preston:So, uh, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:but before you get into it, Barry, would you say, would
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you say Curtis' analogy was accurate?
Barry Lunt:Oh, you want me to opine on that?
Barry Lunt:Well, actually I quite liked it.
Barry Lunt:I think there are some similarities.
W. Curtis Preston:And like LTO, uh, Tesla has a lot of haters.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:There's a lot of people that, that like it, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, and the people that like tape.
W. Curtis Preston:And people are like, you know what?
W. Curtis Preston:It's it's like M-Disc, right.
W. Curtis Preston:There are people that are big fans of M-Disc, and then there are people
W. Curtis Preston:that just, well, they don't, I don't think M-Disc really has any haters.
W. Curtis Preston:I think there there's, there's some non-believers and I
Barry Lunt:For sure.
W. Curtis Preston:can talk about that and, um, I want to,
W. Curtis Preston:um, so we've covered M-Disc.
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna, do you have episode names and numbers?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yes, we covered M-Disc in, uh, let's see, episode
Prasanna Malaiyandi:160 "Is M-Disc the ultimate archive medium for SMB and home users."
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So go take a listen.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That was kind of Curtis's and my take on M-Disc based on information that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Daniel Rose Hill had shared with us.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Barry, uh, like Curtis was saying, you kind of have the people who
Prasanna Malaiyandi:love M-Disc and you kind of have the haters who may not be there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think there's actually a third group, which is probably a significant group of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:people who don't even know M-Disc exists.
W. Curtis Preston:and I think that's a, I think that's, that's the biggest group.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, and I was in that group
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:yeah, both of us work.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Up until Daniel.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, I, I, I mean, at this point, My, my day job is one of, of doesn't
W. Curtis Preston:have anything to do with optical media.
W. Curtis Preston:I should probably throw out our usual disclaimer, Prasanna and I
W. Curtis Preston:both work for different companies.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom.
W. Curtis Preston:I work for Druva.
W. Curtis Preston:This is not a podcast of either company not sponsored by them
W. Curtis Preston:or, uh, anything like that.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and, um, the opinions that you hear are ours.
W. Curtis Preston:If you would like to join us on the podcast, please do so.
W. Curtis Preston:Just reach out to me @wcpreston on Twitter.
W. Curtis Preston:Or WcurtisPreston@gmail
W. Curtis Preston:Also please rate us ratethispodcast.com/restore.
W. Curtis Preston:So thanks to Daniel, which is, uh, you know, he calls himself a term.
W. Curtis Preston:I hadn't even heard before backup anorak.
W. Curtis Preston:We had him on the, on the podcast and he turned us on to M-Discs.
W. Curtis Preston:So what I'd like to, so, so first let's just do a quick.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, summary of what, how you would describe M-Disc today.
Barry Lunt:Of of how I would describe it.
W. Curtis Preston:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:Somebody's never heard, they, they know what a DVD is, right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or they know what a Blu-Ray is, but they don't know what
W. Curtis Preston:they don't know what M-Disc is.
W. Curtis Preston:So how, how would you describe that?
W. Curtis Preston:You know, relatively shortly.
Barry Lunt:Yeah.
Barry Lunt:So, uh, if you die, And a thousand years from now, your great, your,
Barry Lunt:your descendants want to learn something about you and they find
Barry Lunt:this something up in the attic.
Barry Lunt:If it's digital, which everything is today, it will have nothing on it.
Barry Lunt:All, all digital media degrades with time.
Barry Lunt:And then a thousand years, it will have nothing on it, except for the M-Disc.
Barry Lunt:The M-Disc will still be readable.
Barry Lunt:And we suspect that people will have a way to read the disk because it's easy today.
Barry Lunt:It's cheap in thousand years.
Barry Lunt:I can't imagine that would be difficult.
Barry Lunt:So the, the data that was recorded thousand years ago will still be there.
W. Curtis Preston:And so it is an optical medium, but it's dif it's different than
W. Curtis Preston:the op than the other optical mediums.
W. Curtis Preston:How.
Barry Lunt:It is different in what we call a recording layer.
Barry Lunt:You know, you have polycarbonate, which is the base material for the optical disc.
Barry Lunt:And then you put a layer of material that is light sensitive so that you
Barry Lunt:can use a laser to actually change the nature of that material and record
Barry Lunt:your ones and zeros.
Barry Lunt:Most
Barry Lunt:of the, uh, well, all optical discs, except for the M-disc use a
Barry Lunt:recordable dye and that dye is organic, which means that it degrades with time.
Barry Lunt:And of course it has to be light sensitive, which means if you put
Barry Lunt:it in the light, the light's going to erase it relatively quickly.
Barry Lunt:Within a matter of years, depending on how intense the light, ours is
Barry Lunt:only light sensitive in that it absorbs light, but it's like stone.
Barry Lunt:It's like using a laser to etch pictures in stone.
Barry Lunt:Once they're there, you cannot remove them.
Barry Lunt:You have to physically destroy the disc in order to remove the data.
Barry Lunt:It cannot be rerecorded.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So basically all the CDs DVDs that I have in my closet
Prasanna Malaiyandi:from things that I've burned, they're probably useless now because they were
Prasanna Malaiyandi:burned probably like 20 years ago.
Barry Lunt:Yes.
Barry Lunt:If you burn them, it's, uh, highly likely that the data's not there.
Barry Lunt:Now, if you buy them in the store, they're not recordable
Barry Lunt:discs, meaning the data has already been recorded and it's recorded on
Barry Lunt:them by a very different method.
Barry Lunt:It's a stamping method.
Barry Lunt:And then, uh, we deposit a metal reflective layer on top of
Barry Lunt:that, and that's very permanent.
Barry Lunt:The N I S T did some studies and they showed that it has a lifetime
Barry Lunt:of about 1500 years on these permanently, uh, stamped discs.
Barry Lunt:So that that's good, but you can't record those.
W. Curtis Preston:We brought you on to talking about the M-Discs, but the
W. Curtis Preston:only if I want to call it competing, there, there is something that,
W. Curtis Preston:that I've, that I've heard about.
W. Curtis Preston:People talk about an archive quality DVD.
W. Curtis Preston:What do you know about that?
Barry Lunt:Quite a bit.
Barry Lunt:We did a lot of studies when we had the, when Milleniata was a, a going enterprise.
Barry Lunt:And we did a whole lot of studies that I've published on
Barry Lunt:the comparison between those.
Barry Lunt:And of course the Naval weapons research center did an independent
Barry Lunt:study for us because they were concerned about storing data for a long time.
Barry Lunt:And they published their results independent of the company.
Barry Lunt:And basically they looked at the very top archival quality recordable optical
Barry Lunt:discs and compared them to the M disc and ours went out by a long, long, long ways.
Barry Lunt:Our, all of theirs died during the test.
Barry Lunt:Ours actually slightly improved.
Barry Lunt:We won't, we don't claim that it improved because we can't see how it could, but
Barry Lunt:it, it, our disc did not get worse at all.
W. Curtis Preston:how, how do you get, uh, how do
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How would you improve it?
W. Curtis Preston:cause if it, you know, I would assume that it's like a
W. Curtis Preston:hundred percent, that's like baseline.
W. Curtis Preston:So how do you improve from that?
Barry Lunt:that's a really good question.
Barry Lunt:Um, digital data is, you know, we like to think of it as ones and zeros.
Barry Lunt:And when you read it back, we turn it into ones and zeros.
Barry Lunt:But in reality, what you do is you change the optical properties of the disc.
Barry Lunt:So in some places it reflects well in other places, it doesn't.
Barry Lunt:And we call those ones and zeros.
Barry Lunt:Well, it turns out that every time you read data back, no matter
Barry Lunt:what you stored on hard disc.
Barry Lunt:Optical discs, LTO tapes, whatever you or flash drives, whatever you store it on.
Barry Lunt:When you read it back, it doesn't come out.
Barry Lunt:Perfect.
Barry Lunt:And so we fix that on the fly, using what we call error correction coding.
Barry Lunt:Well, we can simply look at those errors as they come in and
Barry Lunt:see them before they're fixed.
Barry Lunt:So clearly if I have.
Barry Lunt:20 errors and a competing disc has 50 errors, then mine's better,
Barry Lunt:but they're both correctable.
Barry Lunt:And therefore in the end, they wind up with zero errors because
Barry Lunt:they're all correctable errors, but eventually you reach a point where
Barry Lunt:there are too many errors and you no longer can correct the model.
Barry Lunt:And so the disc fails to read correctly, but that's how we assess the quality
Barry Lunt:of the, the data is looking at the errors before they're corrected.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That makes sense.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, that, that does the, uh, that's, that's how you
W. Curtis Preston:get better than, than a hundred percent because, because a hundred percent really
W. Curtis Preston:isn't a hundred percent, that's the
Barry Lunt:That's right.
W. Curtis Preston:still.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and I, I don't think, I think the average, it person understands
W. Curtis Preston:that, but which that's generally our audience, but I don't think the
W. Curtis Preston:average consumer gets that at all, but.
W. Curtis Preston:I look at things like this, especially something new like
W. Curtis Preston:this, I mean, it's new to me.
W. Curtis Preston:I know it's been around.
W. Curtis Preston:How long has it been around.
Barry Lunt:2008
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So a a while, right?
Barry Lunt:a while.
W. Curtis Preston:I can't believe that I it's literally half of my
W. Curtis Preston:backup career it's been out and I hadn't heard of it until Daniel.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, But again, I, I spent most of my time in tape and then went into disk and in
W. Curtis Preston:the world where I live in the idea of a device, that can only hold, um, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, a certain number of gigabytes, uh, you know, not very exciting.
W. Curtis Preston:The other problem, historically, with, with the areas where I typically
W. Curtis Preston:did backup in recovery, what, well, there's a couple, one, one
W. Curtis Preston:of the big one was, is throughput.
W. Curtis Preston:right.
W. Curtis Preston:And optical has never been very sexy when it comes to throughput.
Barry Lunt:No, it has not.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Great on long term archiving, but, but not so much in, uh, throughput.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What made you want to create M-Disc Barry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like what was sort of the reason behind it?
Barry Lunt:I love telling this story.
Barry Lunt:Um, 2005, I was thinking about my pictures and of course we, uh, If you
Barry Lunt:back up about 30 years, people thought pictures were very, very valuable because
Barry Lunt:you'd, you'd pay for the roll of film.
Barry Lunt:You'd print 'em off and you'd put 'em in a photo book.
Barry Lunt:And people always said, if my house is on fire, the first thing I'm
Barry Lunt:gonna do is get my children out.
Barry Lunt:And then number two, my, my photo albums, because they were very valuable.
Barry Lunt:Well, that's how I felt about digital pictures when I first started
Barry Lunt:getting 'em and that was about 2005.
Barry Lunt:And so I had a hard drive full of them, and I knew the hard drives
Barry Lunt:are prone to catastrophic failure.
Barry Lunt:And so I thought, okay, what should I back it up onto?
Barry Lunt:I thought about optical discs.
Barry Lunt:I knew that they didn't last a long time.
Barry Lunt:I thought about flash drives.
Barry Lunt:I knew they weren't permanent.
Barry Lunt:And I thought about.
Barry Lunt:Uh, magnetic tape and I didn't have really a good option there because getting into
Barry Lunt:it, it's a bit on the expensive side and I knew that there was nothing permanent.
Barry Lunt:I thought, gee, if I care about storing my pictures for a long time, I'm sure I'm
Barry Lunt:not the only person in the world who does.
Barry Lunt:Wouldn't it be nice if we had a permanent digital data storage medium.
Barry Lunt:So that's when I remembered, well, you know, I've seen petroglyphs.
Barry Lunt:I had taken my son and a bunch of other 16, 17 year old Scouts down to a place
Barry Lunt:called nine mile path, about an hour and a half from where I live to do some camping.
Barry Lunt:And while there we looked at some petroglyphs made by the Fremont Indians.
Barry Lunt:Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years ago, still visible today.
Barry Lunt:And I realized that they were made by a process different than what
Barry Lunt:I understood that is their etched.
Barry Lunt:The, the outside layer of the rock is dark from the exposure to the
Barry Lunt:weather for centuries and millennia.
Barry Lunt:And then they just took, uh, some sharp object and etched away that
Barry Lunt:top layer and exposed a light layer.
Barry Lunt:That's optical contrast.
Barry Lunt:And I thought, well, that's how optical discs are made.
Barry Lunt:You have light spots and dark spots.
Barry Lunt:And then I thought, well, we could use an optical disc and put a rocklike
Barry Lunt:media on it, dark and then ablate it with the laser and have dark spots and
Barry Lunt:light spots and record data permanently.
Barry Lunt:And so I thought, wow, that's cool.
Barry Lunt:So that's when I started visiting with my chemistry friend, Matt Linford,
Barry Lunt:and he, and I said, uh, yeah, we think this is worth researching.
Barry Lunt:Let's do it.
Barry Lunt:And then a couple of years later, we found a couple of the guys that
Barry Lunt:were interested starting a company.
Barry Lunt:Uh, Henry O'Connell and Doug Hanson.
Barry Lunt:And that's when we started Milleniata.
Barry Lunt:So that, that was about 2005, 2006 that we started the enterprise.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm coming into this, like from the back end, like
W. Curtis Preston:by the time I find about M-Disc, the M in M-Disc isn't around anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:So I was like, so I was confused and you know, how is this, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, I mean, I've since learned the answers to that question.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so the company, as I understand it, the company itself didn't
W. Curtis Preston:succeed, but the, but the medium did, is that, is that a fair summary?
Barry Lunt:That is yes.
Barry Lunt:In the process of, uh, the many different things that the company
Barry Lunt:tried in order to stay afloat.
Barry Lunt:They licensed the production of the media to Verbatim, and Verbatim has
Barry Lunt:continued to produce the M-Disc.
Barry Lunt:And so as far as I'm aware, they're the only company that produces it today under
Barry Lunt:licensed from the company millennia.
W. Curtis Preston:Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:How is that different than.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, cuz that, cuz my understanding is that the original company isn't around anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:Is that not a correct understanding.
Barry Lunt:that is correct.
Barry Lunt:The company's not around anymore.
Barry Lunt:Uh, we went into receivership a few years ago and so we don't have
Barry Lunt:any proceeds, but, but at the time we were making the discs ourselves
Barry Lunt:and Verbatim was also making them
W. Curtis Preston:okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So basically they have the IP to make the technology right.
Barry Lunt:because we licensed it to them.
Barry Lunt:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So we talk about the media, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Barry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's like only half the equation.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How do you get things onto that media?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I guess is like a critical aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I know we were talking or joking earlier about Tesla comparing
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it to LTO tape drive, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And the cost being so high upfront, what does M-Disc require in order to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:actually be able to use the media?
Barry Lunt:Wow.
Barry Lunt:Huh?
Barry Lunt:That's a pretty deep question, but I, I suppose our technical audience
Barry Lunt:is ready for something like that.
Barry Lunt:Uh, in order to record a one and a zero on the disc.
Barry Lunt:You have to turn on the laser at a certain intensity, leave it on for a
Barry Lunt:certain amount of time and then finish.
Barry Lunt:And it's not a question of just turning it on and off.
Barry Lunt:You have to do a, a start and then an end.
Barry Lunt:What we call a castle.
Barry Lunt:So you have to get the, have to get the, uh, media to ablate.
Barry Lunt:The recording layer has to be ablated.
Barry Lunt:You have to start it and then you have to continue ablating it, but then
Barry Lunt:you have to stop it so that you get a mark that is consistent in length.
Barry Lunt:Let's say they want three ones.
Barry Lunt:Well, if my four ones needs to be exactly.
Barry Lunt:33% longer than my three ones.
Barry Lunt:Exactly.
Barry Lunt:The same is true for my two ones needs to be 33% smaller.
Barry Lunt:And to get those marks to be there consistently is extremely difficult.
Barry Lunt:And then we don't do it.
Barry Lunt:Well, we get what we call jitter, which is variation in the time domain,
Barry Lunt:which means we get errors bit errors.
Barry Lunt:It increases our bit error rate.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Which is the last thing really you want
Prasanna Malaiyandi:for like a disc you're gonna
Prasanna Malaiyandi:keep for a thousand years, right?
Barry Lunt:Clearly you want extremely low bit errors.
Barry Lunt:So we just had to work with developing what we call a right strategy.
Barry Lunt:Well, the write strategy, it turns out.
Barry Lunt:For the DVD had to be unique.
Barry Lunt:And so we had to develop it and then we had to, uh, include that write
Barry Lunt:strategy in the drives that, that recorded and read back the DVD.
Barry Lunt:Well, when we developed the Blu-Ray version of the M-Disc, it turns out
Barry Lunt:that one of the write strategies for one of the various types of media for the
Barry Lunt:Blu-Ray version already worked for ours.
Barry Lunt:So we didn't have to have a different kind of drive.
Barry Lunt:So originally you had to have special drive for the DVD, but for
Barry Lunt:the Blu-Ray you didn't have to.
Barry Lunt:And so now you can record on any M-Disc with the right DVD
Barry Lunt:drive, but you can record on any Blu-Ray M-Disc with any drive.
Barry Lunt:And then of course the good news is once they're recorded, you can
Barry Lunt:read them on any DVD player or any Blu-Ray player in the world.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:wow.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So that, because unlike LTO tape drives, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Where you have to, I know Curtis you've talked about, yes, you need a certain
Prasanna Malaiyandi:type and make sure it's compatible and all the rest it looks like with M-Discs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's pretty much anything as long as it can read a Blu-Ray should be
Prasanna Malaiyandi:able to at least read that disc,
W. Curtis Preston:Typically not even all writeable DVD and Blu-Ray media
W. Curtis Preston:were always readable in all drives.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, So, but, but you're saying this one is,
Barry Lunt:This one is
W. Curtis Preston:information on that is little outta date, but,
W. Curtis Preston:um, you're saying no problem here.
Barry Lunt:no problem.
Barry Lunt:There are plenty of read strategies and the read strategies all work
Barry Lunt:with the M-Disc, thankfully.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, and, and this does bring up a related question though.
W. Curtis Preston:Cuz when I was, when I was researching this, I.
W. Curtis Preston:Again, you know, go big or go home.
W. Curtis Preston:I was looking at the hundred gigabyte discs.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, I was like, uh, just interesting, based on the application, I might use it.
W. Curtis Preston:I might not need the hundred gigabyte disc.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Because it is a write once, by the way, I can keep appending.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
Barry Lunt:You, you can keep appending until the disc is full.
Barry Lunt:You can keep append.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:So, I found an incredibly inconsistent, um, Verbiage on various
W. Curtis Preston:Blu-Ray drives as to whether or not they supported the larger medium.
W. Curtis Preston:Do, do you think, like would all Blu-Ray drives support the larger medium,
W. Curtis Preston:or does that, do I have to find a specific one that would support that?
Barry Lunt:You would have to have a specific one that supports that.
Barry Lunt:My understanding is that the Blu-Ray standard is 25 gigabytes per layer.
Barry Lunt:You can get two layers per side of the disc, and you can get a two sided disc,
Barry Lunt:which gives you four layers total.
Barry Lunt:But that means you have to have a drive that supports the two layers.
Barry Lunt:And then of course you have to turn the media over in order
Barry Lunt:to access the other side.
Barry Lunt:I, I don't believe there's a Blu-Ray derived that has, uh, right and write
Barry Lunt:heads on both sides of the disc.
W. Curtis Preston:So a hundred gigabyte disc is really.
W. Curtis Preston:Two 50 gigabyte disc is what I'm is what I'm hearing.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
Barry Lunt:Yeah, basically layers
W. Curtis Preston:So, so I guess it makes it a little less cool.
W. Curtis Preston:I thought it was a hundred gigabyte disc.
W. Curtis Preston:What it really is, is a two-sided 50 gigabyte disc,
Barry Lunt:Yes.
Barry Lunt:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And my guess is that's no different
Prasanna Malaiyandi:than like Blu-Rays itself,
W. Curtis Preston:It probably isn't probably isn't.
Barry Lunt:Not at all.
Barry Lunt:That's the Blu-Ray standard.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, it wasn't immediately obvious to me.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I'm I'm sure one or two of the listeners are like rolling their eyes
W. Curtis Preston:right now, like Curtis, you're so stupid.
W. Curtis Preston:You should
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I remember I was having.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Twitter chat message thread with Daniel about this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And he was saying, because he lives in Israel, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That getting the higher density disc is actually a lot more expensive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so he is like, yeah, I basically ended up, I think goes what, 5 25 and a hundred,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think terms of the size of those.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He's like, yeah, I got like the middle one, because that was just the cheapest
Prasanna Malaiyandi:per gigabyte cost for right now.
W. Curtis Preston:what I, what I found for me acquiring it via, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, my favorite South american themed, uh, internet retailer.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, is that they were, it was generally about the same, like
W. Curtis Preston:in terms of dollars per gigabyte.
W. Curtis Preston:So it was just buy what you thought worked for you, and obviously depending
W. Curtis Preston:on which supplier you go with.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But, um, the, uh, but I was frustrated on the whole support
W. Curtis Preston:for the, for the hundred gigabyte.
W. Curtis Preston:Thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so really what it is, what you're saying, Barry is it's support for the
W. Curtis Preston:50 gigabyte, um, is the thing that makes it, um, because the, like you
W. Curtis Preston:said, the, the BluRay standard is 25,
Barry Lunt:That's right.
W. Curtis Preston:right?
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so I, I, my, my, my research will continue, you know, it's interesting,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, I heard your story, the origin story, if you will, of, of, of M-disc,
W. Curtis Preston:I, you know, I know what happens when you assume, but I assumed that, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:you're, you know, I'm guessing you're LDS, you're, you know, you work for BYU.
W. Curtis Preston:I figured there was an LDS angle to this, um, the, that, because
W. Curtis Preston:I know that, um, the church.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, is, is big on preservation and all of that sort of stuff.
W. Curtis Preston:So I, I, I concocted in my head a completely different origin story.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, does it, does it have, is there any connection to your university?
Barry Lunt:Not really the, there there's an abtuse connection in
Barry Lunt:that we felt that the church might be one of our early customers.
Barry Lunt:Uh, as you mentioned, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints
Barry Lunt:really does care a great deal about storing things permanently with their,
Barry Lunt:their granite vaults in the little Cottonwood canyon, up in salt lake
Barry Lunt:and so forth, but they don't use.
Barry Lunt:Unproven technology.
Barry Lunt:They only use something that has been proven and been around for a long time.
Barry Lunt:And the course, uh, the M-disc, of course was not proven at the time.
Barry Lunt:We don't know if it's been adopted, at least to our knowledge.
Barry Lunt:It has not been adopted by the church.
Barry Lunt:Uh, but no, that it wasn't initiated by the church.
Barry Lunt:We just knew that they might be an early customer.
W. Curtis Preston:It was kind of hopes.
Barry Lunt:We were
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, the, yeah, so that's an interesting aspect by the way, cuz
W. Curtis Preston:you know, the conversations that I've had on Reddit with what I'll call
W. Curtis Preston:randos, um, to borrow a name from, uh, or, or word from the younger
W. Curtis Preston:generation, random people on Reddit.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's the, there are those that.
W. Curtis Preston:When they hear about in this case, M-disc being rated for a thousand
W. Curtis Preston:years, when they hear about tape being rated for 30 years, when they hear
W. Curtis Preston:about Blu-Ray being rated for whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:all understand that that that's via, you know, advanced aging technology,
W. Curtis Preston:obviously M-Disc wasn't invented a thousand years ago and it hasn't
W. Curtis Preston:been tested for a thousand years.
W. Curtis Preston:Since, since most people haven't participated in advanced aging
W. Curtis Preston:techniques, um, you know, maybe help us understand that part of it a little bit.
Barry Lunt:Yeah, I, I love to talk about that.
Barry Lunt:My chemistry friend, Matt Linford, uh, is one that's even stronger in this
Barry Lunt:area, but, uh, he has helped me make sure I understand relatively well.
Barry Lunt:So let's back up, uh, a few decades to where paint.
Barry Lunt:Is being, uh, used nationwide primarily here in this country and
Barry Lunt:various companies are saying, well, our paint is better than your paint.
Barry Lunt:Well, how do you know that it's better?
Barry Lunt:Well, okay.
Barry Lunt:Let's, let's take a surface.
Barry Lunt:Let's paint it with our paint and your paint and then let's abuse it.
Barry Lunt:Well, how is paint abused?
Barry Lunt:What causes paint to degrade?
Barry Lunt:Well, we know that sunshine and rain and temperature variation, all of
Barry Lunt:those are pretty tough on paint.
Barry Lunt:So let's put it in a chamber where we put bright lights on it.
Barry Lunt:We raise temperature and lower the temperature and.
Barry Lunt:Put rain on it and then let's test it.
Barry Lunt:Well, that's fun.
Barry Lunt:And that's cool, but how do we tie a science to it?
Barry Lunt:Well, the really good thing is this guy named arinias and another guy named iring.
Barry Lunt:Both came up with equations that tell us exactly what the degree of degradation
Barry Lunt:is as a function of the materials being used and how that relates to real time.
Barry Lunt:So let's say that I degrade something in a, in 20 hours of this abusive testing.
Barry Lunt:What does 20 hours of abusive testing mean?
Barry Lunt:So, all we have to do really is identify what kinds of factors cause the
Barry Lunt:recording layer of the M disc to degrade.
Barry Lunt:We already knew enough about polycarbonate and we know what
Barry Lunt:causes polycarbonate to degrade.
Barry Lunt:So that means that if we put ultraviolet light on the, and, and regular light
Barry Lunt:on the, uh, disc and the recording layer, if we put it in temperature,
Barry Lunt:high temperature and high humidity, we know exactly how much degradation will
Barry Lunt:cause thousand years of degradation.
Barry Lunt:That's accelerated aging.
Barry Lunt:It's a science that was developed by the paint industry.
Barry Lunt:And now we it's been extended of course, to all sorts of
Barry Lunt:industries, including optical discs.
W. Curtis Preston:Interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:So you're basically just sort of borrowing it, it, by the way, I had no idea that
W. Curtis Preston:it started with the paint industry.
W. Curtis Preston:Had
Barry Lunt:That's fine.
Barry Lunt:So, so that's what the Naval weapons research center did
Barry Lunt:down in China Lake, california.
Barry Lunt:They had this chamber and the chamber had a lot of bright lights and it
Barry Lunt:had temperature control and humidity.
Barry Lunt:So they put all the discs in there, including ours, including the very best
Barry Lunt:optical discs and just tortured them under very carefully controlled conditions.
Barry Lunt:And then tested them, put 'em on a reader.
Barry Lunt:See what the error rate, what happened to the error rate.
Barry Lunt:And of course you watch those error rates climb and climb and climb
Barry Lunt:on all the other discs until they completely failed when no, they were
Barry Lunt:no longer correctable where our disc was just going, Hey, this is nice.
Barry Lunt:This is like a walk on the beach,
W. Curtis Preston:Interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:I walk on a very hot beach, but yeah,
Barry Lunt:a very hot, very intensely lit beach, but nevertheless, not a problem.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So after they did all this testing, do you know if
Prasanna Malaiyandi:there are other government agencies or other groups who are using
Prasanna Malaiyandi:M-Disc for their archival media?
Barry Lunt:At one time.
Barry Lunt:I know the library of Congress was, uh, looking at it.
Barry Lunt:And I also know that all senators and all congressmen were given an M disc drive
Barry Lunt:so that they could record things on them.
W. Curtis Preston:I'll give the good and the bad, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So the good is this all sounds great.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:And, and I'll give the bad, and then I'm gonna go back
W. Curtis Preston:to the good, the bad is that.
W. Curtis Preston:This combination of things that we said earlier of like the
W. Curtis Preston:business aspect of it, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Like what, what would happen tomorrow if Verbatim's like, you know what?
W. Curtis Preston:We've been making this for, you know, X number of years now, and there's
W. Curtis Preston:only three guys that are buying it.
W. Curtis Preston:It's some guy named Daniel out in Israel, keeps buying a bunch of copies and then
W. Curtis Preston:nobody, nobody else is buying this thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we're just gonna stop making it.
W. Curtis Preston:So that, that, that's the worry I do understand the good is that.
W. Curtis Preston:That doesn't mean that because of, because of, you know, how it was
W. Curtis Preston:designed, that doesn't mean that what you've done is in any way degraded.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:You can still, you will continue to be able to read
W. Curtis Preston:an M-Disc that you've written.
W. Curtis Preston:I I'd say that the only worry would be that you would get enthused
W. Curtis Preston:about something that then might be suddenly, um, you know, snatched away.
W. Curtis Preston:But
Prasanna Malaiyandi:stockpile.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:but, but.
W. Curtis Preston:If there are large governmental or, or, you know, commercial concerns that are
W. Curtis Preston:in any way using M-Disc, I would think that that would, and none of that was
W. Curtis Preston:really a question, Barry, I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know how you want.
W. Curtis Preston:how you want to comment on that.
Barry Lunt:We would love to have had large customers using
Barry Lunt:large quantities of discs.
Barry Lunt:And I know at one time, uh, one company was developing an optical
Barry Lunt:disc, uh, cabinet that would store thousands of optical discs.
Barry Lunt:And they would be, uh, what we call cold storage.
Barry Lunt:So, you know, you store it on them and then just keep it there for a long time.
Barry Lunt:So, uh, but that apparently didn't catch on.
Barry Lunt:And so we've never found a.
Barry Lunt:Single entity that purchased large quantities of the M-Disc.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was thinking just about like Daniel's use case, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:He had a very specific use case where he's like, Hey, I'm creating all these videos.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I need to store them somewhere.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can't upload it to the cloud because it, my internet sucks and it's too expensive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And M-Disc is one of those things that he sort of latched
Prasanna Malaiyandi:onto and sort of educated us on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm just wondering, are there other people who just don't know
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it exists going back to the initial thing we were talking about, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Those three groups, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It just seems, there are a lot of people who don't know it exists and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the fact that it's not really that expensive to start using it either.
Barry Lunt:Yeah, that's a great question too.
Barry Lunt:And I attended a number of conferences that were related to archival.
Barry Lunt:So the archival.
Barry Lunt:For like eight it's eight years.
Barry Lunt:I believe I presented papers at the archival conferences, two different ones.
Barry Lunt:And you meet people there who care a great deal about storing things for a long time.
Barry Lunt:And all of them are concerned about the fact that digital
Barry Lunt:data is not something that.
Barry Lunt:They can store it permanently.
Barry Lunt:They all have what they call cycles.
Barry Lunt:So they'll take it and copy it onto something new.
Barry Lunt:And so they're always refreshing it, putting on a new media type, just because
Barry Lunt:that's the only way to keep it persistent.
Barry Lunt:And a number of the times that I went there.
Barry Lunt:They would say, well, there's one exception and that's the M-Disc,
Barry Lunt:but we don't know much about it.
Barry Lunt:And their studies they're being millennials.
Barry Lunt:And of course we have a vested interest in bragging about ourselves.
Barry Lunt:And so you can't, you can't, you have to doubt our validity.
Barry Lunt:That's the perspective.
Barry Lunt:Anyway, uh, they say, well, they themselves say that it lasts a
Barry Lunt:thousand years plus, and they do cite this one study by an
Barry Lunt:independent agency, the naval weapons research center, uh, but who knows.
Barry Lunt:And so the most of the response that I got.
Barry Lunt:Well, we don't know enough about the M-Disc.
Barry Lunt:We haven't seen a proven track record.
Barry Lunt:And in the meantime, we know we have processes, allow us to preserve
Barry Lunt:our data for the next five years.
Barry Lunt:And so we're okay.
W. Curtis Preston:Mmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But as your data keeps growing, though,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it's like at some point copying forward that data, every time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're gonna spend all your time with your tape drive, just moving
Prasanna Malaiyandi:data from one to another, rather than actually backing up anything new.
Barry Lunt:Then you're exactly right.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I mean, I, I think, I think you might be being a little hard on the tape
W. Curtis Preston:and optical folks that aren't M-Disc.
W. Curtis Preston:When I hear you talking about like optical dying after 10 years, you
W. Curtis Preston:know, you talk about, you say your, the M-Disc is good for a thousand years.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, they say that optical is good for a whole lot longer
W. Curtis Preston:than you're talking about.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and LTO tape, for example, rated for 30 years.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, not, not dis right.
W. Curtis Preston:Disk is a different problem and certainly not solid state, but, um, you know,
Barry Lunt:I wanna say something about those numbers.
Barry Lunt:When they rate life expectancy, they almost always are giving you the
Barry Lunt:maximum, the best life expectancy.
Barry Lunt:They're not giving you the mean, and they're not giving you the minimum.
Barry Lunt:And so what you hear is them bragging about their media.
Barry Lunt:Well, of course they would do that, but we're, we're saying that our shortest
Barry Lunt:life expectancy is a thousand years.
Barry Lunt:In other words, you won't have problems until a thousand years.
Barry Lunt:Let me cite a study that I did back in 2012 published at the conference.
Barry Lunt:So these are, this is a published, uh, optical disk life expectancy a field
Barry Lunt:report from the, uh, is ISM/ODS 2011.
Barry Lunt:That's the international symposium of optical media and optical data storage.
Barry Lunt:And what we did was we studied the total of 26,500 optical discs
Barry Lunt:stored by two different libraries.
Barry Lunt:And these were recorded professionally by these libraries and then stored in
Barry Lunt:optical storage boxes in a temperature and humidity controlled environment.
Barry Lunt:So these are non circulating discs.
Barry Lunt:You can't check them out they're backup purposes only.
Barry Lunt:And what we did is we checked and looked at what is the percent of
Barry Lunt:files that can't be read on these discs brand new versus five years and
Barry Lunt:three to seven years out and so forth.
Barry Lunt:We had some that were three years old and some that were up to 14 years old.
Barry Lunt:And here's the bottom line.
Barry Lunt:2% of the files per year are starting to fail.
Barry Lunt:So every year you lose 2% more of your files.
Barry Lunt:So that's with the very best optical quality archival quality
Barry Lunt:stored in pristine, absolute best controlled conditions.
Barry Lunt:We're losing 2% per year of our files.
W. Curtis Preston:Just to make sure I understand this is not
W. Curtis Preston:something that would be caught or fixed by error correction.
Barry Lunt:No these files that were unreadable had so many
Barry Lunt:errors that they couldn't be read.
W. Curtis Preston:that, that is shocking.
W. Curtis Preston:But I'd love to take a look at that study.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, maybe we could do another episode on cuz that's, that
W. Curtis Preston:is certainly does not match what the optical and I can, I assume that you've
W. Curtis Preston:done a similar study with M-Disc.
Barry Lunt:Um, we've not had a library that has used
Barry Lunt:the M-Disc for, uh, 14 years.
Barry Lunt:no, we've not done a similar study with the M.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
W. Curtis Preston:It would, it would be a very interesting
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Do you,
W. Curtis Preston:to, to do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know it's probably not a good sample size, but given that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:M-Disc has been around for a while now, have you actually gone back and looked at
Prasanna Malaiyandi:those very first M-Discs that were burned?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:If you will, to look at the.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to see what the error rates look like.
Barry Lunt:Wow.
Barry Lunt:What a good question.
Barry Lunt:Yeah, we would love to do that.
Barry Lunt:I'd no longer have the funds to do that kind of research because the company
Barry Lunt:was funding my research I don't have the company anymore, so no, I have,
Barry Lunt:I've not done that, but I would love to.
W. Curtis Preston:Gotcha.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, it's interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, the verbiage that you said that the conferences that they go to,
W. Curtis Preston:that you went to, and, and they said, there's this one company, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:millennia that, but we don't know much about that, but we know what we
W. Curtis Preston:have and we know what we need to do.
W. Curtis Preston:And we have a process built around that.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, And cuz that matches a lot.
W. Curtis Preston:So a, another guy that's been on the podcast, uh, the, uh, Jeff Rochlin.
W. Curtis Preston:So we had him on here about how Hollywood archives data.
W. Curtis Preston:And I happened to be in his, uh, he, at the time he was, um, head
W. Curtis Preston:of it for Disney Feature Animation.
W. Curtis Preston:And I was in the, um, Um, I was in his data center when they were archiving.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, Dinosaur, I believe was the, the movie and they chose to archive
W. Curtis Preston:onto DVD, but not Blu-Ray, which was available at the time, because
W. Curtis Preston:it was a new unproven technology.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, And, uh, and by the way, that's a lot of DVDs
Barry Lunt:oh yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:cause those are 4.7 gigabytes, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That is a lot of DVDs.
W. Curtis Preston:He had this, he had this, like, it was a robotic DVD, uh, you know, machine
W. Curtis Preston:that, uh, he could basically somebody's job was to put in all these DVDs and
W. Curtis Preston:then wait for the export to, to finish.
W. Curtis Preston:And then they would take all those DVDs and put 'em out.
W. Curtis Preston:And now what I'm hearing you say is.
W. Curtis Preston:That was only like 15 years ago.
W. Curtis Preston:And that, that stuff's, that, you know, probably degraded
W. Curtis Preston:to the point that, you know
Barry Lunt:2% per year.
Barry Lunt:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:2% per year.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, well, you know, to be honest, did we need to save a hundred
W. Curtis Preston:percent of Dinosaur anyway?
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:not at all.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I guess for people who want to get access to M-Discs and the drives, right, is
Prasanna Malaiyandi:it just a matter of looking up where verbatim sells their M-Disc purchasing,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:uh, in whatever the appropriate size they're looking for and just making
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sure they have a compatible Blu-Ray.
Barry Lunt:Yes.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, it seems pretty straightforward.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, and I did quite a bit of research on, on Amazon.
W. Curtis Preston:There was no shortage of vendors that were selling M-Disc capable Blu-Ray drives.
W. Curtis Preston:The only challenge I found was in.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, finding ones that had the, the 100 gigabyte or the 50 gigabyte stamp on them.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so now, now that I understand that 100 gigabyte is really
W. Curtis Preston:just 50 gigabyte flipped over.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know how that , I don't know how much that will affect my, my research.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, cuz there were a lot, there were a lot that said 50 gigabyte, I thought.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I'm sure your, your answer to this will probably.
W. Curtis Preston:I have no idea how to answer that question, but I'm asking anyway, um,
W. Curtis Preston:there, there are some people out there that have, that are using the M-Disc and
W. Curtis Preston:that they, they were critical of some of the Blu-Ray drives that write to.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and it's like, well, what would make a good drive versus a
W. Curtis Preston:bad drive when writing to M-Disc?
W. Curtis Preston:Do you have any idea what that might be.
Barry Lunt:Oh, yes.
Barry Lunt:Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of variation in how the write strategy
Barry Lunt:works on the laser, the, the interface between the laser and the media itself.
Barry Lunt:Can cause quite a bit of variation because there's movement of the
Barry Lunt:head, both laterally and vertically.
Barry Lunt:And then of course the media is not always a hundred percent consistent
Barry Lunt:across the surface of the disc.
Barry Lunt:So you're going to have areas where the laser works more
Barry Lunt:effectively or less effectively.
Barry Lunt:And so you wind up with, uh, what we call headroom.
Barry Lunt:Uh, headroom is the distance between how good, how well a disc operates uh,
Barry Lunt:without failing and how perfect it could be if everything worked perfectly, that's
Barry Lunt:the headroom that you have to work with.
Barry Lunt:So you always want a disc that works yet has room for improvement, fewer errors,
Barry Lunt:in other words, and that is all a function of the physics of the recording process.
Barry Lunt:But as soon as you get below that headroom, you're suddenly
Barry Lunt:starting to run out of room.
Barry Lunt:And now you're, you're recording with so many errors that you will
Barry Lunt:not be able to read it back, uh, with a hundred percent corrected error.
W. Curtis Preston:But I'm, I'm not sure.
W. Curtis Preston:Maybe, maybe you heard a different question than the
W. Curtis Preston:one I thought I asked, but.
W. Curtis Preston:Because I don't think that's an answer to the question I thought I was asking.
Barry Lunt:Sorry about that.
W. Curtis Preston:that's fine.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm talking about the drives themselves.
W. Curtis Preston:Like what would make a good Blu-Ray drive versus a, not as good Blu-Ray drive.
W. Curtis Preston:And I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:For someone looking to purchase a drive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:How can they figure out which one
W. Curtis Preston:because the, the price difference is like there
W. Curtis Preston:are $40 drives that do M-Disc.
W. Curtis Preston:There are $150 drives that do M-Disc.
W. Curtis Preston:What's difference between a $40 Blu-Ray drive and $150.
W. Curtis Preston:Blu-Ray drive.
W. Curtis Preston:Marketing.
Barry Lunt:I clearly did not answer the question you asked and I apologize.
Barry Lunt:So the, the answer to that is I would have to test the drives myself.
Barry Lunt:I would have to take a bunch of standard media and record on each of the, the
Barry Lunt:drives and then see what my error rate is in the read back, because you're right.
Barry Lunt:Uh, I can't tell when I look at the brand, I can say, well, that's a reputable brand.
Barry Lunt:Is this brand $150 versus.
Barry Lunt:$60.
Barry Lunt:Is it worth that much more?
Barry Lunt:I don't know.
Barry Lunt:And until I do an analysis of the discs that it writes and, and look at how
Barry Lunt:many errors there are on that disc.
Barry Lunt:When I read it back, I won't know the difference, but is it possible that
Barry Lunt:a $160 drive will have fewer errors when I read it back than a $40 drive?
Barry Lunt:Yes, it's possible.
Barry Lunt:But can I say that?
Barry Lunt:No, not without testing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And then I think the other challenge will
Prasanna Malaiyandi:be quality control too, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because that $160 drive, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You might have a batch that looks amazing and someone else buys the exact same
Prasanna Malaiyandi:one and they just got a crummy batch.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And so now you get more error rate or bit errors than before.
Barry Lunt:Bit errors.
Barry Lunt:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:All right.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, my research continues well.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's been fascinating, Barry.
W. Curtis Preston:I am encouraged and excited about this medium.
W. Curtis Preston:It's new to me.
W. Curtis Preston:So I, I want call it new medium.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not that new.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and you know, I, I have the same concern that you do, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The same concern that started the creation of M-disc.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I think about it all the time.
W. Curtis Preston:I think about how that, um, you know, We, we, we used to get a box of letters,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, from an attic somewhere.
W. Curtis Preston:And you learn stuff from somebody from a hundred years ago, there
W. Curtis Preston:are no boxes of letters anymore.
W. Curtis Preston:That's gone.
Barry Lunt:that's.
W. Curtis Preston:right.
W. Curtis Preston:That that's, that's just, that's just not gonna happen unless
W. Curtis Preston:somebody hands over the password of my Gmail account or something.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But, uh, and assuming my Gmail account is around.
W. Curtis Preston:10 years, but, but the photos, the photos are a real thing.
W. Curtis Preston:We, we really don't.
W. Curtis Preston:We really don't as a, the current society is so we're, we're so
W. Curtis Preston:used to very reliable pieces of technology until I drop it.
W. Curtis Preston:Of course.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or wash it.
W. Curtis Preston:and yeah, or wash it, shut up Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:You don't know what you're talking about.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I'm on my second set of.
W. Curtis Preston:AirPods here, by the way, due to a little trip in the wash.
W. Curtis Preston:We don't as a, as a society just, we don't do a good job of preserving the stuff that
W. Curtis Preston:used to automatically be preserved for us.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:I think if you want to start going down the route of properly
W. Curtis Preston:preserving, even just for yourself properly preserving important.
W. Curtis Preston:Photos and videos that you think you would like to have in 20 years?
W. Curtis Preston:I can't think of a better way to do that than M-Disc.
Barry Lunt:Yeah, they, they will be there.
Barry Lunt:The disc will have the data.
Barry Lunt:I, I like to tell other people that say, well, the cloud's a solution.
Barry Lunt:Well, the cloud is a very nice solution.
Barry Lunt:As long as you continue to pay your annual subscription fee.
Barry Lunt:But when you die, they don't preserve it because they love you.
Barry Lunt:They preserve it because you pay them.
Barry Lunt:So once you stop paying them, they will not preserve your data.
Barry Lunt:It's not going to be there.
W. Curtis Preston:No, it's not gonna happen.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, Barry, thanks.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks so much for coming on.
Barry Lunt:Thank you, Curtis.
Barry Lunt:Thank you.
Barry Lunt:Thank you, Prasanna.
Barry Lunt:It's been great to visit with you both.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks Prasanna.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, you know, do you think, do you think we covered this?
W. Curtis Preston:Alright.
W. Curtis Preston:This week?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think we did a good job.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And thank you, Barry, for answering our questions.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Honestly, at this point, I'm like I have a bunch of things, pictures
Prasanna Malaiyandi:and other important stuff, sitting on disks and other things I'm like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:maybe I should go pick up an M-Disc drive and some media Curtis, when you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:finish your research, just tell me what you buy so I can buy the same thing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It makes it easier.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I'm gonna buy 10.
W. Curtis Preston:Apparently.
W. Curtis Preston:That's what I need to do.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna buy 10 Blu-Ray drives.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then I, you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You don't, you know, an easier solution for this.
W. Curtis Preston:what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We should just ask Daniel what he bought, because
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I bet you, he did the research and.
W. Curtis Preston:I hate it.
W. Curtis Preston:I bet.
W. Curtis Preston:I bet you, you are right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, Daniel, but if I know Daniel, he probably bought the $150 drive.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:All right, well, thank you very much to the listeners.
W. Curtis Preston:We'd be nothing without you be sure to subscribe, uh, so
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