As Sony exits, Verbatim doubles down on optical media — stable supply of discs is a "top priority" despite shrinking market
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Verbatim for the win
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CD-ROM discs came in caddies early on. They weren't popular with consumers I would guess. MiniDiscs were designed with a protective caddie.
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Verbatim is doing more than just keeping the formats on life support – it also unveiled new hardware at CES 2025. Its Slimline Blu-ray Writer lets you back up 4K video to Ultra HD Blu-ray and even comes bundled with antiquated Nero disc burning software.
This is the important part imo, given that LG and Sony both pulled out of the USB Blu-ray reader-writer market
Means we'll be able to rip Blu-ray's into the future (I hope)
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M-Disc/Archive Blue ray discs are currently pretty much unrivaled if one needs WORM(write once read many) storage for important data.
Anything cloud is an issue in that regards, while a few options exist that somewhat imitate WORM to comply with regulations they are often expensive, harder to maintain and, if long term storage is required, prohibitivly expensive.
The next option, Tandberg RDX needs a far less popular writer, it's WORM media is far more expensive, far more sensitive towards exterior influences and it's much harder to make sure you will be able to read the data in 20 years.
LTO is nice, the tapes are somewhat cheap but the drives are extremely expensive - far to expensive for smaller businesses or consumers.
(And please for the love of god, normal exterior HDs,etc. are NOT backup media for long term storage, especially not WORM- which is important in times of ransomware attacks)
So in the end verbatim would be an absolute idiot to destroy this market. I work with a lot of smaller healthcare facilities and they all exclusively work with them - they routinely burn their data on a M-Disc that is then stored in a secure location, as they all need to provide their patient records for at least 10, mostly for 15, in some cases for 30 or more years. The doctors can literally go to jail if they do not comply with that.(And getting hacked or your building burning down is not an excuse)
As a CEO of a small company we also need to retain certain tax and accounting data for 10 years, some for 20 years. And even as a individual I have some stuff I legally must retain for 10 years.
And of course photos of important life events and some documents (insurance, mortgage) are also something I don't want to loose if the house burns down. Therefore the important stuff gets burned to a M-Disc three times a year and then locked into a bank vault quite a bit away.
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A few won't. I have a disc that looks as if it was tested with hot needles many times just for fun.
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I would not even be confident that the disc would be readable in 50 years' time except by certain archivists or hobbyists.
There are so many hours of music people wrote on Amigas or Atari STs that are just floating around out there on floppy discs that are still readable, but only by a very small number of people, so they will never be heard again, and it's been only 30 years.
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This is why you add a disc reader and a laptop that can run directly from a power brick without a battery installed in the safe. This way the next generation has a way to read it and transfer it to modern media.
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Burned DVDs use a dye that turned dark when hit with a laser. The dye was claimed to be stable for 100 years but wasn't. Mdisc is different and should last longer.
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If you're encrypting and scrambling your own personal data and not properly saving the keys, that L is on you dog.
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You should value yourself more. If you think it's important to have history passed down more than 20 years or whatever the average person remembers, then your own life should be as valuable to you.
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I can pass down stories much more valuable than a series of photos my kids will throw in the bin. My grandmother had huge photo albums, now she's gone and we just stuff them into the back of a closet.
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Ahh, didn't see the .au
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If only they weren't so expensive.
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They don't hold that long.
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Nothing stops people from mix matching backup media.
If I lose the series I downloaded versus my family photos, not the same impact.
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I was the infant and have destroyed many discs.
