 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rosal here another topic another video today on the whole subject of Digital archiving which as some folks who subscribe to this channel might know is a big interest of mine I've you knew a lot of videos recently about this technology called the mDisk this archival graze DVD and blu-ray that I think is an amazing tech I'm super excited to have encountered this but when you talk about backup and archiving with folks who are interested in this Some people are I mean it's definitely minority of people nowadays who are doing happy to do archiving on Tech like the mDisk, which is of course a form of optical media It's basically very similar to the blu-ray just Engineered for actual cold storage. So we're a minority within a minority There's a minor probably probably safe to say it's a minority of computer users Who really care and think about backup most people are happy to just put their stuff up to the cloud and say that's backed up Whole another day's video or rant about why the cloud isn't back up And even if you're using the cloud and I think the cloud's amazing You still need to put them put some thought into a proper backup strategy or archival strategy And they're not quite the same thing especially if you are a videographer or a photographer and you're dealing or producing relatively large amounts of data You are ideally going to have to have somewhere to store that data That is in two places one of those onsite and one of those off-site just to protect against any Disaster that might affect your main data store So the main criticism I've seen against optical media for backup is people say well aren't you worried about Obsolescence and that's what I wanted to record this video about give a few thoughts along those lines so the first thing I would say about obsolescence is Technology inevitably moves forward right to state the obvious I mean if you look at storage in particular It's kind of fascinating what's happened in the space of just 50 years Which is in the history of the humanity a mere blink in the eye We've gone from floppy disks for for those who remember the floppy that could store about 1.5 megabytes They're initially actually read only then we had Then optical media kind of had its day in fact one of my first memories using a computer is going on to Napster I hope the FBI don't come after me now and Downloading some track and burning it onto a CD when that was like the latest and greatest tech and that was quite exciting So be able to pop a CD Into your cars CD player when cars still had CD players So optical had this kind of actual day in the sun then and then We had in terms of computer storage Hard drives HDD's People will then remember that s SSD solid state drives with an X kid on the block And now we're moving into NV NV ME and other types of storage So what I'm trying to say basically is that it's inevitable that that that storage media is going to evolve over time particularly if you think about if you've ever been involved in the process of digitizing Video content stored on old formats like VHS, right? So there's still very much an industry for people usually at this point more elderly folks who have got their video libraries on VHS and They are they want to digitize it because of obsolescence, right? Technically today we can get your DVDs on to the next form of storage media So the point I guess is that if you're going to take archiving seriously you can never say Well based on the history of computing so far and how storage has evolved. There's been no point in time at which What you had was good There's always been this kind of forward evolution and people who really want to keep their video content or whatever their archiving viable for for the long term are Basically in the business of periodically moving from one form of storage to the next Sometime before it becomes obsolete. So if you take the VHS As an example right now. There's I'm sure there's still a lot of video being stored on VHS It might already be degraded due to bit rot and etc And now people will be putting that probably they'll be skipping the DVD and most folks would be putting that straight on to a cloud For for storage now, that's fine to put it on to the cloud. You still need your on-site copy and that's why Technology like the M disc as an alternative to NAS storage still has a place so The point in front of maker is that firstly storage evolves over time. That's to be expected and likewise with the M disc We're going to eventually have the point in time at which that becomes obsolete And then we're just gonna have to move on to the next thing But backwards compatibility is a slower moving process than the advance of technology So what I mean what I mean by that point is that if you look at the storage technology moving through these Sequential improvements as I've talked about it's still possible. It's still very easy to buy or write a DVD Even though optical media most people think is dead Likewise LTO is still a very viable market. It's an old form of storage technology Very much relevant for archival in the enterprise environment, but it's still advancing LTO is not dead at all It's actually still a live project. There's still new new LTO standards coming out And if you go back to the floppy disk I mentioned before you can still buy for not a lot of money a floppy disk USB reader on amazon.com and floppy disks are actually pretty resilient to bit rot so You could make this argument in 1970 You know should I be putting all my stuff on flat or let's say 1980 after maybe hard whatever hard drives came on the market You could say should I really be using the floppy disk for backup for archival if for whatever reason you did and 30 to 40 years later. We can still read that data just fine So the process of backwards compatibility is a is a slower process And therefore if we extrapolate from the history of storage evolution today's we can expect that perhaps once in our lifetime We might face an event where our data archival pool such as perhaps the M disc Becomes becomes obsolete and then we're stuck So the key to never reaching that point is to know when it's going to happen now How how and when are we going to reach obsolescence in the M disc? Well, too We have two potential fail points or choke points to be aware of firstly And this is I think the bigger threat is that the M disc will fall out of production, right? The actual disc because only verbatim currently make them now That's not going to affect you if you already have your stuff on M disc It's just going to mean that you're going to have to find a different strategy for archival the second problem that can affect your ability to archive on M disc is that the Burners are going to be discontinued as well because if there's no one buying the discs are probably not buying the burners So those are two things but they're not going to affect your ability to read M disc If you want to be able to read your M disc archive You're going to need a drive that can read the M disc Just use the drilling noise in the background and they're currently on the market So I would say if anyone listening to this who's really concerned about the day when the M disc their M disc archive will not be readable I would buy a second drive just for backup because Burners and readers can actually fail The the laser has a life cycle So I would buy one right now while they're on the market just to have that sort of as a backup in case They truly vanish and if if and when they do truly vanish along with the M disc As a actual me medium. That's the point where you have to say, okay, I'm probably it's probably a bad idea to continue Using the M disc for archive. Here's what I have on M disc We get it on to whatever the next thing is and I truly do hope that we get during our lifetime or during the next few decades a More modern technology that has M disc's unique property of being pretty much immune to bit rock because it's actually fascinating that that really that that sort of Storage that permanence for storage has just been completely overlooked in favor of let's just put everything on the cloud So if that happens, it would be great and then you can move over to the next thing and then the process starts again You're waiting for backwards evolution and just to the point where you see it And this this might not happen for a hundred years So you might be off the planet and this might be a problem for your for the generations to come or your kids If you have kids to worry about so it's not something I'm actually worried about at the moment It's something I have at the back of my head that I'm as I'm currently building up a Archive library on M disc and keeping that in two locations I'm just gonna see and at the point where I find that I can no longer purchase M discs or M disc or no longer readable I might say or the USB interface or something on the software level happens that you can't Read an M disc anymore not because and that would be the USB drive is no longer Recognized by modern computing software. Let's say that happens Optical media drive compatibility is dropped from all major OSes that would be the point that I would say okay Now I need to shift my shift my archive off to the next thing But I hope that I may never have to have that or if I do maybe it's a problem I'm gonna have in a 50 years time And then we can move on to the next thing so that's what that's my thoughts on the M disc and whether Impending obsolescence if it is a thing is a reason not to use the M disc You can see my conclusion is that it's not and I still think it's amazing tech for archival and To the background of this lovely symphony of drilling noises. I'm gonna end this video Thank you guys for watching more videos for me. We'll be coming soon to this YouTube channel