Researchers at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have developed an optical disc with a capacity of over a petabit of data, equivalent to well...
Real, good quality, factory-made discs, maybe. Anything else (from bad quality factory stuff to writable discs), not so much.
And backups where not done on factory-pressed discs.
Blu-Rays were more of a pain because of the format itself; Handbrake itself wouldn’t do the job, I had to use MakeMKV to get a huge mkv file then wash it through Handbrake to compress it to an mp4. Not a single one failed.
Movies on DVD, out of ~300 discs, I had a total of 6 fail because the discs are somehow damaged, most were visibly scratched and wouldn’t play back in a normal DVD player either.
TV shows on DVD, out of ~150 discs, ~40 of them partially or totally failed, many had visible disc rot. And there was definitely a pattern that boils down to “cheaper discs tended to fail.” Older discs from earlier in the format’s life proved more reliable, I think because, for example, my copy of Friends was purchased in the mid-2000s relatively early in the “TV shows on DVD for binge watching” era, some 60 discs in total, no failures. Smaller runs of shows that not a lot of people bought that were kind of plunked out on DVD for the nine people that bought them like Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The Greatest American Hero? 50% failure rate. An interesting one is my copy of Stargate SG-1. I own some seasons from an earlier pressing that came in individual standard plastic cases in a cardboard box, you know what I mean? Those were reliable, only one disc failed because of scratches caused by mishandling. I own some seasons from a later re-release in those slimmer 5-discs-in-a-cardboard-foldy-thing, and more than half of those are unplayable due to disc rot.
Meanwhile I have CDs made in the 80’s that still play just fine.
The same promises we got with CD then.
They last very long as long as no humidity catches it tho.
Real, good quality, factory-made discs, maybe. Anything else (from bad quality factory stuff to writable discs), not so much. And backups where not done on factory-pressed discs.
Last year I ripped my whole DVD collection.
Blu-Rays were more of a pain because of the format itself; Handbrake itself wouldn’t do the job, I had to use MakeMKV to get a huge mkv file then wash it through Handbrake to compress it to an mp4. Not a single one failed.
Movies on DVD, out of ~300 discs, I had a total of 6 fail because the discs are somehow damaged, most were visibly scratched and wouldn’t play back in a normal DVD player either.
TV shows on DVD, out of ~150 discs, ~40 of them partially or totally failed, many had visible disc rot. And there was definitely a pattern that boils down to “cheaper discs tended to fail.” Older discs from earlier in the format’s life proved more reliable, I think because, for example, my copy of Friends was purchased in the mid-2000s relatively early in the “TV shows on DVD for binge watching” era, some 60 discs in total, no failures. Smaller runs of shows that not a lot of people bought that were kind of plunked out on DVD for the nine people that bought them like Kolchak: The Night Stalker or The Greatest American Hero? 50% failure rate. An interesting one is my copy of Stargate SG-1. I own some seasons from an earlier pressing that came in individual standard plastic cases in a cardboard box, you know what I mean? Those were reliable, only one disc failed because of scratches caused by mishandling. I own some seasons from a later re-release in those slimmer 5-discs-in-a-cardboard-foldy-thing, and more than half of those are unplayable due to disc rot.
Meanwhile I have CDs made in the 80’s that still play just fine.