Anybody using the M-Disc...?

[The Blue Boy]

Hi all,

A while ago I had a discussion with Colin about these and I wondered if anybody here had, or knew someone that had, invested in this system yet? Like most of us here I burn my files to disc and back-up to external hard drives but there is always that little niggle in the back of my mind as to the life expectancy of either.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about...

http://www.mdisc.com/m-disc/

I suppose the argument might be that as long as you treat your storage media with care, there should be no need to worry. My only thought is that I often go back to (now) quite old discs and wondering if I'm tempting fate every time I do so.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

[Manfred M]

I've had a good look at these disks and am waiting for them to come out with a BluRay version (which they claim to be working on). Single layer DVDs simply have far too little storage capacity on them to meet my needs. A 4.7GB DVD means I would be filling around 4 - 8 of these disks a week, based on my current shooting patterns. A BluRay disk is about 25GB.

That being said, using optical disks for archival purposes in not a very good idea. I've had properly stored ones go bad on me in less than a year. Right now I am using external hard disk (both traditional RAID with mirrored disks and a DROBO array), on top of the hard disks in my computer, while waiting for somthing better (higher capacity) to come along.

[Colin Southern]

Haven't seen them in these parts yet.

To be honest, these days I'm using Google Drive more and more for storage. I did have to pull out an old DVD for something the other day though ... worked flawlessly.

[shreds]

Yet another DVD format!

We all fret about archival quality, but divorce, theft, fire or plain simple loss of the disc probably concern me far more than keeping it for the next 100 years.

Also the stuff I took twenty years ago in many cases does not come up to todays standards (except for the large/medium format stuff), and whilst some of it might be of sentimental value, a lot of it will be of no interest to others in the future given the advances in technology.

I will let Getty and Google worry about archival qualities and storage long after I have shuffled off this mortal coil!

[The Blue Boy]

Agree with all of the above,

Just wondered if anyone had bothered with 'em yet. Seems it's a no so far...