I would actually be far more comfortable with storing my data for archival on CD-ROM or DVDs than BluRay, since the former standards have been publicly and freely documented[1][2] from the physical properties up to the logical bits and bytes, while I don't believe the same exists for the latter.
In other words, anyone can, with enough engineering resources, create a drive capable of reading those discs, which is more than can be said of more proprietary formats.
If you really need to read a CD-ROM then getting your hands on a SATA DVD-Drive, which usually are able to read CD-ROM, shouldn't be that big of a problem. Without looking hard I'd probably come up with 3 spare ones in my basement alone.
Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't.
> Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't.
You'd be surprised. I went recently through several of mine and lo and behold they could all be read. I guess it depends a lot on your storage conditions.
I have friends who work in the IT section for an under-resourced cultural institute focused on the preservation and recording of disappearing cultures and ethnic groups, including the preservation of speech and utterances in languages that now have no living native speakers. They discovered recently, to their alarm, that the only surviving copies of some recordings were now on old 3½ and 5¼ inch floppies that had somehow been stored without accurate cataloguing. They are struggling to find equipment that can 1) read the discs, 2) interface with the disc drives, 3) tell them what is actually on each disc and what file formats are in use (they have good guesses, but no certainty) and 4) find software that will be compatible with those formats.
They have neither the skills nor budget to do in-house nor outsourced forensics for this. At this point they don't even know what exactly might be lost to humanity's knowledge, and the descendents of these people, forever.
So, I probably shouldn't have been surprised, considering it's HN, but the number of people who reached out to me on this was surprising and touching. I think I've responded to everyone directly, my apologies if I missed you.
I'm glad to report that, since last I'd spoken to them about the problem, they've figured out what to do and consider the matter solved. The material is recovered, recatalogued, and in good order.
Thanks again everyone for the concern, interest, and offers! I know where to come if something like this comes up again!
I have a device that interfaces SATA (and a few other formats) to USB. A few of my friends have been very happy to borrow it, so it's definitely a tool I'm going to hang to. With no moving parts, it should last a while.
I have one as well, and it even does IDE too. I do computer repair in my spare time, so I'm not exactly the typical user, but I've gotten a lot more use out of mine then I would have expected as well.
For those looking to buy one, I would personally recommend just going for a simple one that has an external AC adapter. I've found a lot of the ones that attempt to power the drive straight from USB ports can unexpectedly have the drive power-off due to the USB ports not being able to supply enough power, which is obviously a huge issue (Even my eSATA with a Y-cable has this issue with some drives, making it basically unusable). Powering it externally is a lot more reliable.
I store backups on BluRay and bought a USB BD drive for this reason. I’m not planning on keeping the backups in this format forever, if something better comes out in 10 or 20 years I’ll move to that. I only use the drive once or twice a year, so it should last that long, and there will still be adapters for USB type A then.
My biggest concern is getting the disks. I can walk into my local supermarket and buy a DVD-R or CD-R no issues, but BD-Rs (especially high capacity discs) are hard to find even now.
