Talk:M-DISC

Needs more and better (quality) info

Too bad this article reads as an advertisement and not even a good one at that. No details on what the differences are and how it works. No info on similar or competing technologies. I came to this article wanting to know what the heck the M-disc logo on my LG WH14NS40 means and this left me with most of my questions unanswered. At least it's notable...  :) 71.196.246.113 (talk) 02:54, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I agree. What I can gather is that M-DISC doesn't use any kind of organic dyes for its recording layer. From pcmag.com:

"Instead of using an optical dye, the Millenniata M-Disc literally etches data in stone, or at least a rock-like material. That material, of course, is Millenniata's secret sauce. However, the company descries it as being made up of inorganic materials and compounds including metals and metalloids, and contains several of the materials and compounds common to rocks including silicon dioxide and carbon. It's also stable to 500 degrees Centigrade, Millenniata said, and is also stable in the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, and water - important for surviving both fire, and floods." 83.233.143.175 (talk) 23:40, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like it's based on CMOS/EPROM's or similar technologies, then. Did you know that you can use an EPROM as a (very slow) UV camera? Just write all 0's to it and then let the image focus on the surface of the memory. Not practical but it does work.

As far as a 'secret sauce' goes, I would think that it's patented, not a trade secret. Otherwise, they could be easily copied, legally.  ;) I'm wondering if they used silane and aluminum vapor deposition to get their (very thin) phase-change optical material... It would explain the expected lifespan. It's effectively like a Mask ROM or CPU - you expect it to work for decades at the least and easily if it's been sitting unused for centuries. 71.196.246.113 (talk) 08:39, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:BOLD did a rewrite, added their current logos and photos of the front of the burner I just got with the logo that looks confusingly like it says "MODISC". :-) —Hobart (talk) 04:28, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

...annnnd moved it ;) —Hobart (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. —Hobart (talk) 00:34, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

---

References

Requested move 26 September 2013

Millenniata → M-DISC – The technology (a type of recorder & media currently available in stores) is notable, but the company itself doesn't merit a separate article. —Hobart (talk) 01:52, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

• Support - I spent time searching thru various WP articles to determine what M-DISC was when I saw it listed on a newly purchased recorder. I'm not aware of anything else notable the company does (I think they could also be a blank media seller), so that's the real main page subject. —Hobart (talk) 01:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

• Moved after 8 days. —Hobart (talk) 00:34, 5 October 2013 (UTC) (non-admin closure)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

M-Disc alternatives?

I think we should have an 'M-Disc alternative' chapter available. Not talking about regular CD/DVD/Blueray, or HDD/SSD/Floppy, or cloud. But more about long term storage products that could compete with M-Disc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.140.111.29 (talk) 01:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for suggesting it, I'll try to add a section about M Disc competitors and alternatives.

Sincerely, Thenewright22 (talk) 01:42, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

audio CD version

Please add content about prospects for audio CD-R version of this tech. Such recordings seem to currently be particularly vulnerable to bit-rot.-71.174.177.142 (talk) 13:56, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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Article written by monkey on crack

If I did not already know the principles of how information is stored on optical discs, I would not understand this article at all. It is lacking structure and actually also content. User:ScotXW^t@lk 09:58, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

1. "M-DISC" is not a technology but some Brand name. Such can refer only and exclusively to a certain technology, but this is not guaranteed!
2. the technology is said to be a "trade secret" and at the same time patented…
3. neither the patented bits are explained nor the entire whole which the brand name represents
4. Sections of this article seem to be copy-pasted into this article. User:ScotXW^t@lk 10:02, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

I think the M in "M-DISC" is indicative of the claim that the discs can last 1,000 years, M being the Roman numeral for 1,000. MightyArms (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

No one has bothered to solve the advertising problem, so I think this needs a speedy deletion and a rewrite, because there seem to be signs of plagiarism, and also some of the information is very vague or unsupported.

Sincerely, Thenewright22 (talk) 12:34, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say this, but I have tried to find more citations on M Disc on Google, but unfortunately, some of them are just links to shopping websites, or they repeat the same information about M Disc, which is already stated on Wikipedia. Our only choice is to delete the article entirely, I think I might add the deletion notice back, since I removed it earlier.

Sincerely, Thenewright22 (talk) 12:20, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

I've edited this article earlier, and I've made some changes to clarify it. First, it seems that there is no copy pasting in this article, so that issue doesn't need fixing. Second, you mentioned that the properties of the M Disc are a trade secret, but contrary to that, there are patents explaining it! Fortunately, I have fixed it, by removing the statement about the trade secret. Third, there is a single sentence, explaining what the properties of M Disc are, that is, M Disc is made of glassy carbon. The statement lacks detail, but more is explained in the glassy carbon article. Finally, I believe that there is nothing else to do about these issues, since I already solved them.

Sincerely, Thenewright22 (talk) 05:51, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

"As of the 2020's there are only 2 licensed manufactures' M-Discs"

Could whoever wrote this tell an actual English speaker what they meant to say so it can be put into English? jae (talk) 14:05, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The mostly-myth of data rot on SSDs

The last section of the page mentions SSDs out of nowhere, saying that they suffer from bit-rot over time compared to "mechanical". This was mostly spawned from a misinterpretation of a JEDEC report on enterprise drives which had nearly reached their insane lifetime write capacities that usually stretch into 10s of petabytes these days and the effects of storing them at very high temperatures with no power. These are drives that have almost burned out their storage capability anyway, in the sense that the cells have trouble holding a charge. Your consumer drive will never reach this level of usage, unless it's one of the typical bottom-binned models marketed to gamers which can be rated for as low as 300 write cycles and you're constantly reinstalling different games and windows on it. A new drive used to back up data every 6 months or so will probably never lose data in this way.

The more important part, though, is what happens if you DO power it at its lowest power state. Even regular hard drives last longer when you're not turning your computer on and off constantly because the mechanical stress of spinning up to 7200RPM and rapidly taking on heat is far worse than holding them at constant, but they usually have a motor / head failure on the next reboot, or the firmware has corrupted itself and isn't regularly reloaded from the drive so of course nothing noticed. I wish I could find the journal paper on powered SSDs but I read it about 6 years ago and have no idea where I found it... basically, with the drive just plugged into an enclosure allowing it to remain in its lowest power state, there's never any lost charge. Even the stray cosmic rays that sometimes flip a bit on RAM modules (oh hi ECC) won't do that to an SSD, and the type you'd be buying for archival has error correction built in anyway. The conclusion was that, assuming a steady power source and safe storage conditions, the only thing that would damage them beyond the ability to store the data they already contained was slow erosion of new channels between layers / traces via spontaneous rare electron tunneling events which would tend towards the shortest path (the spot that was damaged in the last event) and eventually form a resistance free bridge betweeen things that weren't meant to be bridged.

The amount of time that takes even on a high power draw device like a GPU or CPU is long enough that people don't worry about their CPU suffering from "bit rot" and you can usually get any computer running again by fixing whatever other part was messed up. On a low power mode SSD, the time was estimated to be so long that they revised their conclusion on what would practically limit the time data could be kept on a drive to be the eventual expansion of the sun into a red giant and the cooking of the earth that will occur when it's in the middle of a cloud of helium undergoing fusion, although some might start going in as soon as 2 to 3 billion years from random events. Most will be in dumpsters in 10 years because data hoarders decided they needed the next big new thing, regardless of what the medium is, and you don't need to provide power to get most of them to retain data that long.

Mechanical drives are subject to fun things like random magnetic fields messing with them, a slight imbalance or nudge during spin-up when taking out of storage gouging the write heads into the platters, or, the most fun part of all, the cheapo memory on them (either the R/W cache, the nvram that holds SMART data and configuration, or the firmware flash ROM) failing and causing the system they're in to be unable to boot regardless of whether they're an "important" drive. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 15:49, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

glassy carbon or inorganic write layer

The Wikipedia article claims a glassy carbon write layer but the Verbatim M-Disc webpage ( https://www.verbatim.com/prod/optical-media/m-disc/m-disc-bd-r/branded-surface./ ) mentions an inorganic write layer. What's going on? Are the newer discs made with a newer inorganic write layer material? If so the Wikipedia article should clearly mention newer discs use an inorganic material everywhere the glassy carbon material is mentioned. 2A02:1811:B7B4:E800:ADCB:C604:2AA7:9CF4 (talk) 11:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)