I have recently thought about burning some data to Blu-ray and therefore looked for some cheap blank discs. To my surprise, higher density Blu-rays seem to be much more expensive than lower density ones. In my country (Germany) for example, I could buy a 25 GB BD for 0,44€. A 100 GB BD would cost me 8,77€! At that price, it would be more efficient to store 100 GB on four 25 GB discs instead of one 100 GB disc (1,76€ vs. 8,77€). Sure, if it is one file I would have to split it first and combine it again when I want to access the data, but that effort seems to be worth it.
Why are high capacity Blu-rays so much more expensive, especially compared to HDDs or SSDs where the price per GB/TB usually drops with higher capacity?
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Optical media are crazy expensive in Germany, especially the multi-layer ones. They are also getting harder and harder to come by, and horrible quality. Buy from Japan: they have a larger selection (though it’s also been getting less, recently), at lower prices (even after adding delivery and tax), and better quality. Try to get the ones made in Japan, the Indian stuff can also be sketchy (MAGBA*, VERBATIMf) though for some reason not as terrible as the crap being sold in Germany. Good choices in my experience are Panasonic for 25 and 50 GB (MEI.RA1, MEI.RB1) and the quad layer SONY.NQ1 (128 GB). They’re super easy to order from Amazon.co.jp, they’ll calculate the total price for you including anything payable at customs, so no bad awakening due to having to pay extra once it arrives. Not all JP sellers will ship to Germany, but most do.
I’ve done this for years now and can’t recommend it enough.
Good luck!
With wrong with the 100GB bdxl from verbatim? I bought a 20 pack recently and they’re working fine for me (so far???)
Funny you should ask. This is what’s wrong with them… (yes, that’s my own review.)
I couldn’t believe it when I saw this on the first disc I took out, thought that must be an outlier, but one was worse than the next. The holes you see in the pictures were literal holes in the reflective layer, pinhole sized, totally see-through. I thought ok maybe it’ll work anyway and burned one, but of course it failed.
So that’s those. At the same time I also tried the ones that are branded as M-Disc. I you think at almost twice the price per disc those surely must be better, think again – they’re even worse. Again, it took my breath away when I noticed how the inner part of those discs looked. (And as I wrote in the review, those are _not_ scratches on the surface, this is all _inside_ the polycarbonate.
It’s possible that both of those were intermittent issues, maybe a new fab they brought online, or some change in production methods, or whatever, but for archival purposes it’s unthinkable for me to ever ever ever again trust anything from Verbatim, at least as sold here in Germany.
I _have_ been considering giving the Mitshubishi/Verbatim media sold in Japan a try, as it wouldn’t surprise me if they sold completely different stuff there. Especially now that Panasonic has stopped producing (Feb 2023), it may be worth a try. Not sure yet.
I bought these discs from an ebay seller:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Verbatim-VBR520YP20SD4-Recording-Blu-ray-Printer/dp/B07YZM8Y1M/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3DS8UZ3OBIW6Z&keywords=bdxl&qid=1700868864&sprefix=bdx%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-2The surface is covered with weird white specks, but they all worked for me. I burned them overnight at 2x speed. I checked the files with hashes and none of them had errors. I’m considering buying more since they’re on sale for black friday. I do wonder what those white specks are tho.
Here are some pics I took
https://imgur.com/gallery/c1ZYs1WHuh that definitely looks less than reassuring. Is this superficial or inside the polycarbonate?
I’d actually seen that offer because this whole thread made me check Amazon.co.jp again myself and I saw that the 128 GB Sonys were also now cheaper than last time I ordered (though not in the BF sale) so I decided to order more. ;-) But I also looked around some more and saw this offer — I was close to giving them a try, but ultimately didn’t. Your story would seem to confirm it was the right call.
The eBay ones with the specks came from Japan as well, or were they for another market?
To your first paragraph: Panasonic sadly stopped production this February (which is why around that time prices for all the remaining stock of their discs basically doubled). I’m still picking up some leftovers here and there. Sony I think is now only still producing the 128GB. All their 25 and 50 GB discs I’ve bought over the last two years or so were RITEK.BR3 and VERBAT.IMf.
SONY.NQ1 (128 GB).
do you have a link`?
I found something but 0,05€ seems a bit too little per disc:
Those are the exact ones. And I always paid between 7000 and 9000 ¥ (last order earlier this year was 8800¥) so this is the normal price. But your math is off, this is a 10-pack for 50€ (without delivery).
Is the Sony one BDXL?
Yes, quad layer.
BD-XL is a magneto-optic format, like DVD-RAM was. It requires dirrefent technology than pure optical BDs and hence the media are way more expensive.
Supposedly BD-XL last way longer and are used for archiving data.
BD-RE XL you mean. Sorta. It was/is much more like DVD-RW functionally than DVD-RAM.
DVD-RAM was truly trackless MO. You could format one with any HDD/SSD file system.
BD XL is the best consumer archival media out there. But it’s not cheap compared to stashing a few 18TB drives in different locations with a Faraday cage.
Just curious as to why you’re looking to store that much data on a high capacity Blu-ray disc (BDXL) as opposed to flash storage, SSD or a hard disk. The medium, as you’ve come to find out, is expensive and from what I understand you need a specific optical drive to read BDXL media. I know these discs use a non-organic material but I question how resistant it really is to the elements. Disc rot, though not common by any means but much more common than bitrot I feel, is something I’d try to avoid.
depends on location power can be a big issue.
it can be cheaper per year to burn disc , then hdd/ssd storage.
Suggesting SSD/flash for archive “cold” storage is uh, not good. SSD/flash drives are temperature sensitive, and have a lifespan of no longer than 2 years if they are not turned on periodically. For someone looking into optical storage, I’d bet a healthy wager they are looking to put some of the most important data in a closet somewhere in case of their traditional HDD setup(s) failing catastrophically. It’s not a bad idea. HDDs are also fine for “cold” storage as well, but they’re still mechanical, and having something mechanical sit there for years and turned on after a long period of time sometimes doesn’t work out well.
Any media you want to long term store, you want to rotate. Aka, move data from A, to B, to C, B to C to A, C to … Any storage media not specific designed with redundancy in mind, will see bit rot over time, depending on humidity, heat, location (if you live 2k high vs sea level), etc.
I always moved my media around like that, never had a issue with data that goes back 20 years.
For me any media is no different then having a car parked out for 6 months. Sure, it will work, but your battery may (will) be death, you brakes may get locked up, etc… Or leaving a house or apartment unattended for 6 month.
SSD for cold storage is just as good. Been using some SSDs going back to when 256GB was expensive. But like with HDDs, Tapes, etc… rotate and rewrite.
One of the biggest mistakes i have seen in a government job, was making backups, never checking / rewritting those backups and the day they needed those backups. Well, the taps had damage (despite only being 2 years cold stored). So the loads of money they spend on a dedicated guy, who’s job it was to do backups every day, the expensive tap machines, etc, was all for nothing. Simply they did not do checks/rewrites. And nobody was able to blame him, because he was following the exact instructions for making those backups. He even brought up the issue but … “instructions are made by people more qualified then you”. O, they tried to blame him but he stepped to the union and it was quickly resolved in a “nobody was to blame” (because can not blame the managers above him, now can we ;0 ). His instruction got changed to: Verify every tape at minimum X times per year, and rewrite on new taps, with backups for every tape (also increased budget to buy more tapes instead of recycling). And that was like i said, government ;)
Any storage media will fail, and its up to the end user to ensure you have regular rewrites, checks, recoverable parity of the files itself, … Say this as somebody that lost months of programming work, when his primary HDD failed and multiple backups ended up useless ( in the old floppy days ). Multiple backups helps but even that can be fraud. I have seen written DVDs go bad all at the same time (one reason i never backup to DVD or Bluray)…
So far i found SSDs more reliable then most people realize. As long as i rewrite them, every so often.
Optical discs do get bit rot, most Blu-rays are more resistant. Just keep them in a cool dry place.
SSD/flash drives […] have a lifespan of no longer than 2 years if they are not turned on periodically.
What, really?!?!
pretty much, especially QLC drives or cheap flashdrives/sd cards.
Even back in the 2D TLC days, i had flash drives with read errors after less than 7 months of no power.
i had flash drives with read errors after less than 7 months of no power.
That explains a lot!!! Thanks
3D nand is a lot more stable unpowered, but not the cheap storage.
I could buy a 25 GB BD for 0,44€.
sheesh, I wish, I actually never considered BD for storage and today was the first time I saw a pack of BD for sale because I had to search for it LOL
Why are high capacity Blu-rays so much more expensive, especially compared to HDDs or SSDs where the price per GB/TB usually drops with higher capacity?
I believe it’s because of the density? the space is the same but you have to store way more
If you’re hoarding that much data and you need cold storage, you may want to have a look at tapes. LTO-5 and LTO-6 drives are quite cheap to come by and tapes are less expensive than discs on a per-GB basis.
Yeah, heard about tapes. Aren‘t the drives super expensive?
Have a look on ebay, there are some good deals to be had. You could probably get an LTO-5 for around $150-200, although you’ll need a SAS controller and cabling, which could add an extra $50. So the initial cost is definitely higher, but once you’re past that, it’s much nicer to have large 1.5-2.5TB tapes than lots of discs.