On 08/20/2015 10:14 AM, Gary Dale wrote:
On 20/08/15 06:53 AM, ken wrote:
One of the build options for a laptop I'm looking at buying is DVD vs
Blu-Ray. I've never used Blue-ray before, so is there some compelling
reason, as a Linux guy, to want to get Blu-ray?
The decision isn't that simple. As others have pointed out, the "no
optical drive" option also needs to be considered.
I've considered that, but the folks who designed the laptop didn't. The
choice is, as I said, either Blu-ray or DVD. Of course I could tear out
whichever came in the machine, or simply not use it ever. But I figure,
since it's there, I may as well see which would serve better, and for
what. Hence the post.
Another point to consider is "does the Blu-Ray drive support the new
m-discs? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC)" Not all of them do.
Thanks for that. Good to know. The article mentions that M-disks
allegedly last 1000 years and is good at talking about chemical
composition and some other points. It also stated that M-disks need a
stronger laser to burn the media. Is that what you mean by "support"?
Since the article doesn't mention formatting at all, I'm assuming that
the formattings are the same as regular Blu-ray and DVD, yes?
M-Disc's big selling feature is long-term stability, making it good for
archiving or other long-term storage uses.
All optical discs have limited capacity compared with today's hard
drives and SSDs. However the optical drive offers essentially unlimited
capacity by swapping discs. The media is generally mechanically stable
and with M-Discs is also chemically stable so it's not a simple case of
"which is better, hard drive or optical" but rather which one suits your
purposes better?
Yes, a consideration, but not with the item I'm considering. It offers
SSD and HD and optical.
I'm still a fan of optical media for archiving so I've been using
Blu-Ray for several years now. At 25G per disc, I can store multiple
years of work on one disc. However as anyone with a PVR will attest, 25G
is not sufficient for backing up a media library. Still, putting
precious family videos on optical material is a reasonable precaution.
