Don't use them, but these seem right for you: https://lemm.ee/post/55012343
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2025
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Thanks, I missed that post! Looks like the comment section would have answered a lot of my question.
In the end I have pulled the trigger and bought an M-Disc capable burner and a stack of M-Discs, so I'm gonna give that a go and see how it works out.
Sounds good. They do make 100GB MDisc but they are a shorter life span: https://a.co/d/dTOLvW8
What makes you say they are shorter life span? The 25GB and 100GB both have the same "several hundred years" claim.
Oops, just me misreading.
Currently the only solution for a consumer are M-Disc Blue rays. They are currently the only "write once read many" media available that are preferable in these types of situations.
The media is comparable cheap - you can safe your amount of data for around 80-90USD/€ initially(or less for more but smaller discs) and then pay around 10$/€ per year for the new amount of data.
The chances that in 20 years someone is still able to read them are fairly high - there are numerous businesses that are using these disc as WORM media to backup important data on a medium that a opposing lawyer later cannot claim "was manipulated". In 50 years it is very likely to be readable at least by professionals. The discs itself are rated for much longer storage.
If you write on them unencrypted there should be no problem of writing on them. Additionally they do not have issues with byte rot,etc.
Yeah it's an interesting thought. They seem to come up to 100GB capacity, but the wikipedia page claims (with a [dubious] qualifier) that you need some sort of special higher power burning device to write to M-Disc.
I don't have an optical drive at the moment. Would I just pick any rated for BDXL?
You need a designated M Disc capable burner,yes. (Not generic BDXL,there are slight differences) There are a few on the market though - they cost around 100-150 bucks usually.(In theory you can use a regular writer sometimes - I know people who do that,but why risk that?) I usually recommend the verbatim to my clients,they are dirt cheap and work flawlessly so far.
For reading the discs any regular data-capabale blue ray disk drive will do.
I decided instead to use ZFS. Better protection than just letting something sit there. Your backups are only as good as your restores. So, if you are not testing your restores, those backups may be useless anyway.
ZFS with snapshots, replicated to another ZFS box. The replicated data also stores the snapshots and they are read-only. I have snapshots running every hour.
I have full confidence that my data is safe and recoverable.
With that said, you could always use M-disk.
ZFS even if only one server is much better than most people have. If your ZFS replication is to a different building you have done pretty good. However as others have pointed out there are limits. Those servers costs you a couple bucks/month in electric (where I live my electric is 100% wind, but most of you should read CO2). You have to buy both servers, and hard drives will crash regularly.
There are a lot of trade offs, but cold storage backups are often much cheaper in the long run than the backup zfs server. And those cold backups are a lot easier to put into multiple different locations.
I have automated backups including to cloud, but I want a separated manual system that cannot get erased if I mess something up (accidentally sync a delete, lose encryption key, forget to pay cloud bill). I have 3 2 1 but it's all automated and backups are eventually replaced, if it's not a critical failure I won't necessarily know I've lost something.
Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don't want it encrypted.
Based on other conversations I'm planning on using duel disks mirrored, zfs, annual updates and disk checks with disks rotated out every 5 years (unless failing/failed). Handling the need for layman retrival of data by including instructions with the hard drives.
Basically, I specifically want cold storage, and not cloud. I will only add, not delete from it. And I don't want it encrypted.
I have a client with a photographic studio. To give you an estimate, his data is around 14TB of mostly camera pictures with approximately 20 years or history and the owner believe it or not, relies on multiple external hard drives for cold storage, he has a 2TB Seagate thats like 2011-2012 old which still works.
To put in a cupboard tho, M disc is your best bet.
That sounds like a really good idea. You basically get the best of everything.
The cool thing about ZFS is the pool information is stored on the disks themselves. You can just plug them in and import the pools.
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