Hey guys, I just had a curiosity on the multiple ways of storaging stuff and how long would that hold, take backing it up to a newer storage after some years out of the table.
So how did this come in my mind, I was just reminiscing about how I used to play games with inserting a CD or Cartridge onto the device and how I miss that flavour.
I would like to do it again, I already like having my games dependancy free (praise mr goldmountain), and I am saving up some money to spend on hoarding possibilities. I would like to know what would have the longest storage life, would burning games into bluray discs be too unhinged or is something I am missing?
Thanks in advance in helping me out witht his brainstorm.
Don’t bother with M-discs. They only provided a meaningful advantage in the DVD era. I’ve researched this a bit myself and consensus at least in the data hoarding community is use 2 Blu-ray Discs from two different batches (bought 6 months apart). Which still comes out cheaper or the same as branded M-Discs. (Though that may be overkill and truth be told as long as you test the disc and it’s data done months after writing you’ll tend to catch any rare bad ones)
Truth is, quality Blu-ray Discs have all the features that would engender M-disc type longevity in the design spec. Just make sure they’re not low to high (LTH) discs which are inferior but always marked as such at least.
Don’t get no-name cheap ones either, get Verbatim, Sony, some other good Japanese brand. For Verbatim specifically their discs marked MABL on the package are better.
Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.
From my own experience, if they do it's undetectable over several decades. The only discs I lost were scratched CDs, and only where the scratches were at the start area; for mid-scratches the extra parity data recovered a fair amount of it. Discs that were stored in wallets and handled carefully and just sat in a drawer the rest of the time are still perfectly fine all these years later.
Always burn data at lower speeds too, less errors.
I haven't kept up with BR but with DVD, that wasn't true. For a particular burner and media you could find a sweet spot of minimal PI/PO errors. For my 16x dvd burner with verbatim media, that was 4x speed.