PSA: Verbatim no longer sells real M Discs, now puts regular BD-Rs in M Disc packaging
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r/DataHoarderu/JazzKazz (2028)

TLDR: instead of selling real M Discs, Verbatim now puts their cheap organic BD-Rs into M Disc cases and charges M Disc prices for them

In July, I bought 25GB Verbatim M Discs from Amazon. Even though I bought them directly from Amazon Europe, the discs I received were not real M Discs but regular Verbatim BD-Rs with an organic layer that were made to look like M Discs. I noticed right away because the MID of the discs was VERBAT-IMe-000, which is the code for their regular BD-Rs, instead of MILLEN-MR1-000 which is the MID that all 25GB M Discs have. At this point I assumed I'd been sold fakes, but 3 months later I again ordered Verbatim M Discs, this time from German retail chain Saturn, and once again received these discs that I assumed are fakes. I emailed Verbatim's customer service and prepared a bunch of images that show these fake M Discs next to real ones. But to my surprise, after a debate with customer service they told me that these are not fakes, and that these "are the only M Discs that are going to be sold from now on" (quote). What's insane is that these discs currently being sold are not M Discs at all, but regular organic layer Verbatim BD-Rs, yet Verbatim still calls these M Disc. When I tried calling them out on their lies by pointing out things such as the discs' MID being the same as that of regular BD-Rs and the discs having 6x burn speed despite real M Discs being 4x speed, they just chucked it up to "the discs being completely reworked, and we moved production facility hence the new DISC IDs". The most ridiculous part is, these "new M Discs" (as Verbatim support calls them) are writable in any standard Blu Ray drive, you don't even need a drive that supports M Disc burning! For those unaware, M Discs require an M Disc capable drive to be burned, because M Discs need a stronger laser than what is used for regular BDs. This stronger laser is only in M Disc drives and there is no way you could ever write a real M Disc in a non M Disc drive. Yet here we have customers being sold cheap organic layer BD-Rs and being deceived into thinking they're buying M Discs.

I find this absolutely insane as people burn hundreds of these discs a day, trusting them to reliably hold precious data, yet most people aren't aware they're not burning a real M Disc, but just a garden variety BD-R that has none of the M Disc advantages that you pay for. So far the only mention of this that I've found online is a German thread from August where somebody received these same VERBAT-IMe-000 discs as me and thinks they're fake, not aware that Verbatim themselves are behind these discs.

Some stores still have real M Discs in stock, but the majority of them (at least in Germany) now sell the new, fake kind, as I've ordered M Discs from various stores over the past few weeks and 90% of the time received the new fake kind which I returned. It probably also depends on region, I have no idea about discs in the US or other countries. Check the IDs of your discs people.

Quick check:

Comments (226)

That's insane, they are betting on "no one will notice" and when people's fake m-discs fall apart in 10-20 years their money will be long gone.

My thoughts exactly, I thought I was crazy when customer support just nonchalantly told me that these discs are a real Verbatim product. I even kept insisting that they're fakes but they straight up told me this is how it's done now. I don't know if there's some shortage of material for M Discs or what the reason for this mess is, maybe just greed for more profits by selling cheaper to make discs. I've stocked up on 40 real discs for now and can only hope real M Discs will return in the future, but now all the stores here have inventories full of fake discs and one can only imagine how long it will take to sell all those.

I assume you are german, so report it to c't magazine

/u/ctmagazin

Thanks for pinging us! I will forward this to our expert on storage.

We followed up on this and got a statement from Verbatim:

Auf Anfrage stellte Verbatim jedoch klar, dass es sich bei diesen Medien um Weiterentwicklungen handele. Die technischen Änderungen führten zu einem anderen Aussehen und der Fähigkeit für höhere Brenngeschwindigkeiten, die veränderte Medien-ID sei auf eine Anpassung an andere Verbatim-Produkte zurückzuführen. Die ersten veränderten Medien hat Verbatim bereits Anfang 2022 ausgeliefert. Die Datensicherheit der neuen Scheiben steht jener der alten Scheiben nicht nach: Daten sollen nach Angaben des Herstellers ebenfalls 1000 Jahre halten.

Translation:

Verbatim clarified that these discs were advancements. The technical changes resulted in a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media-ID was due to an adaptation with regard to other Verbatim products. Verbatim had already shipped the first modified media in early 2022. The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: Data should also last 1000 years, according to the manufacturer.

And how did they explain this?

"For those unaware, M Discs require an M Disc capable drive to be burned, because M Discs need a stronger laser than what is used for regular BDs. This stronger laser is only in M Disc drives and there is no way you could ever write a real M Disc in a non M Disc drive."

That's a great idea! I'm looking forward to that story :D

Here it is https://www.heise.de/news/Langzeitarchivierung-Verwirrung-um-die-M-Disc-7349953.html

Why did you assume that? (Genuinely curious)

He ordered from Amazon Europe, then from Saturn (German Company), then mentions a german forum thread and later mentions that all german sellers sell the new stuff. So I assumed he is from Germany (or maybe Austria) (probably not switzerland, cause one of the very few things that is as cheap in switzerland as germany is tech stuff).

Or do people from the US buy tech stuff in Europe?

maybe just greed for more profits

Narrator: It's greed for more profits.

Are there other brands with their own 'M Disc?' Or is Verbatim the only manufacturer?

Wikipedia mentions:

Ritek produces M-DISC Blu-ray media, sold under the Ritek and M-DISC brands.

Maybe send your findings to heise and golem.

Verbatim is/was the only one making M Disks? Why did you insisted buying so many?

The reality is likely that the verbatim brand was bought out by some other company and they're just using this branding for whatever they want without respect to what m-disc used to mean

sold to CMC in 2019

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14597/cmc-buys-verbatim-assets-from-mitsubishi

lol

CMC has manufactured Verbatim-branded optical media for a while now using Verbatim’s technologies, so change of ownership is not expected to result in change of quality.

not expected

by the consumer ( ͡\~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

i'm pretty sure most of the time when one company buys out a brand known for quality, there is some contractual minimum term before the purchasing company can modify the process/formula, and as soon as that time expires the quality is gutted and the brand coasts on name ~~brand~~ recognition until eventually tanking.

Isn't it wonderful that our entire world is built around short term gains like this, obviously unstable and unsustainable but carefully lined up to survive exactly as long as the generation that built it to be this way?

I'd say I'm curious what will happen when they're gone or if now every generation is set on this path of self-destructive greedy optimization, but I know the answer is a looming four hundred trillion dollar financial crisis compounded by a simultaneous and increasingly terrifying climate one, so it doesn't really matter. Things are kind of set up to wipe the board when they're done with it anyway.

Isn't it wonderful that our entire world is built around short term gains like this, obviously unstable and unsustainable but carefully lined up to survive exactly as long as the generation that built it to be this way?

it's nowhere near as long as that.

since outsourcing began, the only focus is quarterly profits; not even how successful a company will be for the next year, but how much money will this bring in, during the next three months.

you can thank jack welch at GE for that mindset.

CEO's get compensated based on profit generated, full stop. there's no consideration for what their decisions do to the legacy or long-term health of a company. one guess what kind of decisions they end up making.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59366216-the-man-who-broke-capitalism

Man I got business school PTSD flashbacks just by seeing this name. They're all hard on this guy. They all teach you this is the way. It's so fucked.

https://i.imgflip.com/75jf6u.jpg

Year by year this looks more like a documentary

https://imgur.com/t9DaLaj

Don't go to Wikipedia for information. It is a heavily biased site that hates the U.S. and capitalism. (btw- you wouldn't get better product under communism- you would get nothing at all).

Lol, what is this "opinion" based on?

Kind of reminds of seeing the Kodak and Polaroid brands now on either batteries, or smartphones of questionable quality and performance.

KitchenAid used to be a quality brand. Now I see it on all kinds of crap. Maytag went downhill when Whirlpool bought it.

Definitely aged like milk.

There are many types of spez, but the most important one is the spez police.

They're gonna know

"M" stands for "Maybe" now.

[deleted]

M as in WHAT?

AAAHHHHHHHHHHH ahhhhh ahhhhh ahhh exact! Same! Spot!!!!

Ahahahahahah

You of all people...

So, do ya'll have parachutes?

That's unidentified-SMR@NAS-level scum tactics. :/

THIS. Also they've been doing it to SSDs as well, QLC in models that exist since before QLC, not saying anything about type of flash, controller, RAM in datasheet even for mid-top tier SSDs and then changing them as they please and so on.

FYI, if you look at the bluray ID list:

https://blu-raydisc.info/licensee-list/discmanuid-licenseelist.php#

it's obvious that verbatim doesn't actually manufacture discs anymore.

Their IDs are manufactured by CNC Magnetics or Mitsubishi Chemical.

[deleted]

When I burned, CD-R, DVD+/-R, and lastly BD-R, I would buy Verbatim because they were the best. Once i finally bought a BD-R I backed up my RAW photos on 34 BD-R discs and vadilated they were backed up. Not all were burned at once, I incrementally added more over a 1 year period. I did this to free up space on my HDD by allowing me to delete the RAW files and keep the JPEG on my HDD. So low and behold when I went to get a RAW file off a BD-R disc and the disc is unreadable. I would expect one or two to fail but all but one of the 34 discs failed.

​

It was such a pain to get the warranty on those discs and my lack of trust in them that I never burned another BD-R disc. i still have the replacement spindle of BD-R's in my cabinet to remind me how crappy Verbatim became.

Class action lawsuit time?

This doesn't exist in Europe. A normal lawsuit will do just fine.

This doesn't exist in Europe.

This is just wrong.

Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden already have a collective redress system.

But there's more! The European Parliament endorsed a new law about 2 years ago that will force every member state to add a class action procedure to their judicial system.

I know they're not technically available in my country but does really no other country in Europe have them?

UK technically has had them since 1999, but only two have ever been filed.

Some countries do not have them as a legal concept (Switzerland, Ireland, Germany), some have similar but not equivalent constructions (most allow the litigation to be lumped, but the reward to be on a per-person basis rather than a lump sum reward divided by the class).

Why? So we can all get a nickle after 3 years of litigation, while some law firm rakes in the lion's share? No thanks.

It's not about money. It's about accountability.

Perhaps put a different way, it’s not about the money the claimants actually receive, it’s about the money the company is forced to pay for f’ing over their customers.

Which is also pointless, since it'll end up only being something pitiful like less than a day's net profit (unless I'm wrong and the EU has GDPR level fines for things like this)

This definitely needs a lawsuit

Ah, Verbatim. As I recall, they did something similar back in the heyday of CD-Rs too. As they became commodity items, Verbatim went from being a solid choice selling gold CDRs to selling the same cheaper CDRs everyone but TY was using.

Just FYI, blu ray Mdiscs don’t require a special burner, just a blu-ray burner. Only the DVD version required a special drive.

In theory you can burn Mdiscs with non-Mdisc burner, but you shouldn't https://goughlui.com/2012/12/02/milleniata-m-disc-on-non-m-disc-burners/

That post is about burning DVD M-Discs on a Blu-ray burner that's not made for DVD M-Discs. DVD M-Discs are not made for that, no.

But Blu-ray M-Discs do not require a special burner. The FAQ on the M-Disc website explicitly states this, so I'm not sure why so many people are arguing about it:

While the M-Disc DVD must be engraved in an “upgraded” DVD drive, the M-Disc Blu-ray should work in a standard Blu-ray drive. We designed the M-Disc Blu-ray to work with all Blu-ray drives and to fit within the Blu-ray standard specs. The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) is the group assembled by the Blu-ray patent holders and others in the industry to control the use of the Blu-ray Logo and to set the specifications for media and drives that ensure interoperability. The BDA maintains a test and certification program for all Blu-ray media that the media must pass before the manufacturer is authorized to use the Blu-ray Logo. The M-Disc BD-R has been through this test program and passed as 100% compatible and compliant with all of the Blu-ray specifications.

(From https://www.mdisc.com/faq.html)

Doesn't Amazon have a pretty big problem with counterfeits even it you don't buy from third party sellers? Granted, I don't know if that's the case in Europe but apparently goods sold by third parties, but shipped by amazon, is put in the same pile as goods sold directly by amazon.

I bought Gillette razor blades from Amazon, trusted seller, verified etc. etc. Found out after contacting Gillette directly and sending them pictures, that those blades are fake. And the scary part is that they are extremely well made fakes. I only suspect that they might be copies when I noted a fast dullness. So it might be very well made Verbatim fakes.

Accurate fakes are almost always worse than aftermarket competition. We see this regularly in the r/mobilerepair industry... reputable aftermarket parts are leagues ahead of copycat fake-OEM parts in terms of quality.

I think

A. They have a brand/identity and reputation

B. They actually spend the money on the functionality not the design

Copy-cats make their parts by running the dies* past their lifetime.
e.g. The OEM determines this die can make 100,000 parts then it must be replaced. The manufacturer keeps running the die for another 100,000 parts. Those are the cheap-Chinese-knock-offs and is why they are necessarily sub-standard quality.

  • Die Casting
    Various other manufacturing process have other tooling, such as punches, but the basic principle is the same; they keep using the tooling long past it's quality lifetime.

And the scary part is that they are extremely well made fakes. I only suspect that they might be copies when I noted a fast dullness.

This is interesting... I buy Gillette razors in a large, name-brand supermarket, Gillette branded packaging, premium pricing and each replacement blade lasts maybe 3-4 shaves, max, before I have to toss it. I used to get 7-10+ before the pandemic.

How many shaves were you getting prior to these 'fake' Gillette versions? I wonder if markets are now buying in bulk from Amazon too, and getting the fakes.

Probably more likely Gillette just decreased their quality in the last couple years.

Probably more likely Gillette just decreased their quality in the last couple years.

Shrinkflation and overall quality of basically everything has decreased significantly in the last 2-3 years. Some pretty big examples:

  • Oreo cookies (now owned by Mondelēz International) now contains 3 less cookies per row in their packaging, than pre-pandemic, and the price has gone up. That's 9 less cookies, but cost has gone up ~15%.

  • I track my fuel at every fill-up using aCar/Fuelly for 3 of my vehicles, and have for about 11 years. The fuel efficiency of fuel over the last 3 years is roughly half of what it was pre-pandemic. One of my vehicles is a very efficient 2019 passenger vehicle. Prior to the pandemic, that vehicle was getting 35mpg, now it gets 24-29mpg, with only 2k-3k more miles on the vehicle (still under 29k miles total). The charts on Fuelly show the dramatic downturn across all 3 vehicles (2005 truck, 2012 truck, 2019 passenger vehicle), exactly the same reduction in efficiency, same timeframe, all using 87 octane gas.

  • Produce in every supermarket now is over-picked, lower quality, and seems to spoil/rot MUCH faster than previously. It used to take 4-5 days before fruits or vegetables would turn, now it's 1-3 days, tops.
  • Most electronics is now complete garbage, over-sold features that don't work at all, quality of cables, power supplies, packaging is also sub-par. Even extension cords that advertise being "grounded" have a fake ground plug that doesn't connect to a central conductor in the cable, which is a huge fire hazard.
  • Have you seen the diet that boxes of cereal have undergone in the last few years? Now the "Family Size" cereal boxes are the same as the regular was 2 years ago, and the regular boxes are just over an inch wide boxes. It's appalling.

There's hundreds to thousands of examples, unfortunately. We're living in a world where manufacturers will continue to reduce their quantity and quality and raise their prices, as long as people continue to pay for it.

Reduction of fuel efficiency almost always indicates that they are substituting gasoline with a higher percentage of ethanol

He has seen a 30% decrease in efficiency though, is the difference with ethanol that big? If so, it should be more clearly labeled...

For example, E85 that contains 83% ethanol content has about 27% less energy per gallon than gasoline

https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/ethanol_benefits.html

That is big.

Yeah, it's been known for a long time. If you fill up your car from a pump that sells specialty "ethanol free gas", you will have a noticable increase in gas mileage.

All gas, by default, is allowed to have up to 10% ethanol unless you specifically use a "ethanol free" pump. The government quietly raised that permit to 15%, so gas mileage will suffer even more now. It's possible that now they're diluting has even more.

It certainly can be but you would also expect a hit to the octane. What he is describing is like someone put E85 in the regular tank.
I suspect something is wrong with his car; that loss of efficiency, yet the engine keeps running, suggest a head seal is leaking. Unless you smell the exhaust and smell that it's "sweet" you wouldn't necessarily notice right away.
Maybe he's also burning oil (lots of white-blue smoke coming out of the exhaust?) but kept that part a secret.

PS The "sweet" smell is anti-freeze and it is toxic and lethal.

The USG printed three times the yearly economy in new money in the last decade most of it during the pandemic to pay for their socialist hand-outs.

We have over 300% inflation to work thru. To their credit things are remarkably under control considering how criminally reckless they were with the monetary supply.

If they stop printing money and maintain ~9% inflation then we will work thru the inflation they caused around 2034. If anything goes wrong in the next decade then it takes longer and it means the 20's could have been another roaring-20's but they won't be because we're paying for their reckless cowardice instead.

I’ve moved on to using double edge razors and it works out many times cheaper than Gillette blades, especially those 5 blade cartridges that seem to go blunt if you look at them funny

Don't know; switched to a single safety razor where the blades cost $0.10 and are still good for a couple shaves.
You can go apeshit and buy a $150 handle and still save money in a year.

I got some pretty convincing fakes of electric toothbrush heads but they also wore out super fast. On closer inspection there are some obvious tells, but if you didn't have them side by side you'd never notice.

Amazon inventory mix all the time. Never buy branded equipment from Amazon. Ever. 80% of brand purchases in a test turned out to be fakes. If you can get BBC where you are, the show was called Fake Britain.

What test and which brand?

Like this it looks like you are saying 80% of all brand items on Amazon are fake

A tonne of brands. Pretty much all commonly faked SKUs. In my personal experience, Hoya lens filters, RØDE VideoMics, Kokin filters, SD cards, SSDs.

There'll be loads of videos about it on YouTube.

Possibly, but as I stated in another comment:

these fake M Discs are in the inventory of all major retail chains in Germany like Amazon, Saturn, MediaMarkt, Kaufland, etc. No fakes would be that widespread. Those stores are equivalent to US stores like Walmart, Target, Radioshack etc.

The discs really are made and distributed by Verbatim themselves.

Amazon illegally blends merchandise together.

Their godawful merchandise system does not discern between merchandise, just lumps it all together.

I could put Gillette razors into their system and they’ll pull from my stock rather then theirs. (“Ships and sold from Amazon” even though they raided my stock)

Meanwhile my stock is bogus as hell

Yeah they take stocks for “same” products from anyone who signs up for their Marketplace program as declared by sellers into “comingled” stocks so scammers send fakes all the time. Their employees don’t want to make a scene so don’t refuse fakes, nor does their corporate because it doesn’t matter so long purchasing customers pay and not make claims. The root cause of that is Amazon being Amazon and it needs to be dismantled.

AFAIK VERBAT-IMe-000 are not organic dye discs. I'm pretty sure that's the MID you typically get with MABL-based DataLifePlus discs, but someone else who's done more burning recently can probably provide more insight there. Unless things have changed, those are considered to be quite high quality discs, and were generally highly recommended in the old MyCE forums. I'm pretty sure those are the discs I ended up using for my last archival project.

Also, as others have said, for Blu-ray, no special burner is required for M-Discs. Both M-Discs and regular (not LTH) BDR discs typically use inorganic layers.

I stand corrected on the burner, but the problem remains they're selling regular BD-Rs and pretending they're M Discs. And for what it's worth, I've tried burning the fake discs out of curiosity before and half of them fail mid burn or refuse to burn at all because they're cheap junk, meanwhile I've never had one issue with a real M Disc.

It would definitely be unusual to have that many failed burns with VERBAT-IMe-000 discs. As I said, those were historically considered to be quite high quality discs. I never had a failed burn on my old Pioneer with that MID, even when I burned at slightly faster speeds than rated.

It's possible the discs are completely fake, maybe? It wouldn't be the first time some shady manufacturer had claimed the MID of a more reputable one. Maybe they're not really Verbatim discs at all?

What burner are you using?

I told Verbatim support they're fakes even after support told me the discs are real, and support had to insist like 3 times that they're a genuine Verbatim product before I finally believed them because it seemed so crazy, but they really are made by Verbatim. On top of that, these fake M Discs are in the inventory of all major retail chains in Germany like Amazon, Saturn, MediaMarkt, Kaufland, etc. No fakes would be that widespread. Those stores are equivalent to US stores like Walmart, Target, Radioshack etc. It's not like I bought them from shady places.

My burner is a LG BP40NS20 that's never had problems with any discs. I know it's hard to believe but it really is Verbatim who's to blame here. And keep in mind when I said half of them were junk, I meant like 5 out of 10, as I only bought 10 discs, and the other half did burn, but they aren't M Discs.

Well, that certainly sucks if it does turn out to be that the discs have just gone that much downhill. Aside from the whole "these aren't really M-Discs" issue, I'm actually more concerned if the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs are shit now. There used to be discussions in some of the optical disc forums where users were arguing that there was no point in buying Verbatim M-Discs, because the VERBAT-IMe-000 were already excellent inorganic discs. That's how good those discs were considered to be just a few years ago.

So, my first reaction was, maybe those people were right? Maybe there never was a substantial difference between the M-Discs and the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs, so Verbatim just went ahead and merged the lines? That's a little sleazy/questionable, but we don't know what goes on behind the scenes. Maybe it turned out that Verbatim got the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs M-Disc certified?

But, if you're getting coasters from the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs, that definitely sounds like there are serious issues.

I might purchase another batch of DataLifePlus discs myself and compare them to my old ones to see if I can spot anything obvious. I'm in the States, though, so our stores might get a different supply of discs than you guys did in EU countries, so I might not see the same thing.

One other thought: It's also possible it's something really embarrassing for Verbatim. What if they did move factories, and they've somehow got things misconfigured such that they're putting the wrong MID on the M-Discs? That would result in drives using the wrong writing strategy, which would result in coasters. That's obviously a mistake that should never happen, and would indicate absolutely awful quality control, but it would also explain some of the issues you're seeing...

But, if you're getting coasters from the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs, that definitely sounds like there are serious issues.

Eh, you're going on a single point of info here, so don't jump to conclusions. You have to use Occams Razor. M-Disc vs BDR asside, if they we're pushing out outright unburnable discs, they'd be swamped with returns.

A more likely situation is that either this entire package is some counterfeit BS from a retailer or that their drive is simply starting to fail. You'd really need to start testing these discs in other drives and testing the OPs particular drive with other discs. Coralation is not causation and all that.

Yes, my thinking is that it's got to be a fluke. Verbatim is not the sole remaining manufacturer of BDR discs, and, in my experience, discs from Ritek and Optodisc seem sufficient as well. If Verbatim has gone to shit as bad as all that, they're just ceding the market to the other makers...

Hell, they're not even the only M-Disc makers. The Ritek ones are probably fine. It doesn't seem like they'd just give up and hand the market to them.

if they we're pushing out outright unburnable discs, they'd be swamped with returns.

Look up Verbatim BD-Rs (non M Disc) on Amazon Germany, sort the reviews by negative and you will find dozens of people saying that 10+ discs out of a batch of 50 VERBAT-IMe-000 are unburnable. Things like that are what made me stay from regular BD-R in the first place. Yes, most reviews are positive but that doesn't change the fact that bad discs exist. I liked M Disc simply because I never once had a coaster, you always got what you paid for, but now it's different.

this entire package is some counterfeit BS from a retailer or that their drive is simply starting to fail

How is it counterfeit when these exact discs are being sold by all major retailers in Germany? And how is my drive failing when I've burned plenty of real M Discs without issue since then, and never had issues with any other discs? If you bought the fake M Discs yourself and tried them you might not be so skeptical anymore. I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up online before, but with the Myce forums gone I don't know where there'd be much of a community to talk about such things.

You realize that everything you said there boils down to you saying 'How can correlation not be causation!?', right?

You realize that everything you just said there boils down to you writing a useless one sentence reply, right? If you don't want to have a normal conversation that's up to you, I just replied to you talking about me.

They're still correct in the fact that you're leaving multiple variables static (your burner, and the Verbatim brand faux M-Disks). Without testing the disks on other burners you can't actually say that there's a 0% chance it's an issue with your burner. Have you tested it with the "CD-R" (non m-disk marketed) disks that have that same MID? If you've only ever used other MIDs (which it sounds like is the case since you specifically go for M-disk) then you can't say for sure that your burner doesn't have some small defect/impurity that only presents itself with those disks.

I'm not even saying that it's likely that'd make a difference, but without doing those tests you can't actually rule out a weird issue from the specific combination of those particular "new m-disks" combined with something about your burner (either the model or yours specifically) resulting in an issue that they couldn't test for (or even predict) because it's hyper specific. In anything computing really weirdly specific issues come up that are nigh impossible to figure out the root cause because it only happens with "HP systems with Nvidia graphics manufactured after 2009 but before 2013 in a room with ambient temperatures above 27°C" or something else super specific

Has your opinion on this M-disc situation changed since this comment? I'm going through this thread now trying to make sense of this and I', hoping there's been some clarity since.

I don't really have an opinion either way, I've never used M disks. I was just pointing out that OP's problem can't be definitively pinned down as an issue with the disks alone if other variables are also static.

What if they did move factories, and they've somehow got things misconfigured such that they're putting the wrong MID on the M-Discs? That would result in drives using the wrong writing strategy, which would result in coasters. That's obviously a mistake that should never happen, and would indicate absolutely awful quality control, but it would also explain some of the issues you're seeing...

I don't think so, if you look at my pictures you can see any real 25GB M Disc has a gold tint on the back, while the fakes are straight silver. It's really just regular BD-Rs with an M Disc logo printed on the front, and that's the issue. Why the VERBAT-IMe-000 discs are junk doesn't matter, what matters is getting the MILLEN-MR1-000 discs back. Even if the VERBAT discs had burned fine, I'd still have made this post because it's not acceptable to do a bait and switch on customers like this. I think they've just gone full evil/cheap and want to sell regular BD-Rs for crazy money because they think nobody will notice anyway.

Did you burn those discs at 4x or 6x? At roughly which point in the burning process did they fail?

I burned some at 2x and some at 4x, I never used 6x. I only recall that the first disc failed at around 50%, the second disc I tried to burn like 20+ times, I'd start the burn process and the disc would just hang at the very beginning because Imgburn couldn't initiate the burn. Another disc failed around 20% and the other 3 also wouldn't initiate burning. The rest burned, but even so it just goes to show the quality of the media and I doubt that even the ones that burned will last a decent amount of time.

Exactly the first thing that came to my mind when reading his "complaints". People simply misunderstand the core fact that M disc was designed in the times of DVDs that were all organic based so that was a significant improvement (for DVDs). Blu rays are completely different story but still people will say that M disc logo on the box means something...

MABL-Discs are non organic dye discs, but the reflection layer is a lot more vulnerable and cheaper as the MDiscs, especially with regard to temperature fluctuations and the resulting oxidation behavior during long-term archiving.

There is some misinformation in your post.

First of all, most of Verbatim's BD products, including the VERBAT-IMe-000, use the HTL manufacturing process, which does not use organic dyes. The products that use LTH with organic dyes are marked as such.

Second, for Blu Ray M-Discs you do not need an M-Disc compatible drive. While for DVDs it was necessary since their structure and properties were quite different to a standard DVD, the BD M-Disc structure is virtually identical to a standard BD disc and can be written by basically all BD-R drives.

The problem with M-Discs is the closed nature of the standard. Besides the marketing, not much is known about the requirements to call a disc an M-Disc. In the DVD era, M-Discs were useful since they fixed issues that caused normal DVD-Rs to be less durable, but in the BD era, one could argue that normal off the shelf HTL BD-R that advertise themselves as durable are just as good as M-Discs. Perhaps their normal BD-R discs are fulfilling all the requirements of the M-Discs standard and may be sold as such. The average support person will likely not be able to answer that technical question.

What I really hate is all of their advertising for M-Disc doesn't really different between the DVDs or Blu-Rays. If you go through it all, it's a lot of words that say very little in detail. Very soft on the specifics which I'm certain is purposeful. They don't want people to clue in that M-Disc likely offers no value add over other Blu-Rays when they cost like 5x as much.

Yes, the first two issues have been pointed out to me and those are my mistake, but that has no effect on the situation and what Verbatim is doing. You could be onto something about M Disc being a closed standard and them being technically "allowed" to sell these discs as an M Disc. I've already tried contacting Yours.co (the company that owns the rights to M Disc) to ask them what's up but predictably I got no reply. When Verbatim customer service told me that they had moved to these "new, reworked" discs (VERBAT-IMe-000), I tried to further press them by writing "so you magically updated the M Disc format and gave it 6x burn speed, but it just slipped your mind to point out these changes on the packaging and on your website?", to which they replied yes, they had forgotten and will get on it. That was a week ago and the website still says M Discs burn at 4x speed, because clearly they know what they're doing and just continue this charade.

And as I said before, even if these new discs should somehow fit some requirement, it doesn't change the fact that the discs themselves are cheap junk. I've burned over 80 real M Discs and never had one single problem, but the moment they switch to VERBAT-IMe-000 discs there's nothing but burning problems and issues. Probably they're just cheapskates who want to charge a lot of money for discs that aren't worth very much.

Updating a website takes time.

Especially as I guess who ever even got your message that message needs to go to the right people

I thought M Disc is differentiated by the material: Glassy carbon ceramic like layer that is like being carved in stone. The academic literature from the BYU from where the technology of M Disc is developed points to that: that longevity argued is more so a matter of material science.

The testings that supported the longevity claims (their ISO accelerated aging test and the one from Department of Defense) have no corresponding tests for other media. I’m not saying I think it is indeed more durable per se when it comes to storage, but there is empirical evidence that it is in a league of its own with the material longevity

An honest question - because this is making me twice about my assumptions - Is HTL-BDR really comparable?

The color change he observed is due to a return to a silver-alloy substrate instead of gold which is probably the most important change for archival purposes for Bluray M-disc.

Wow... well guess it must be the cost of manufacturing now. I'm going to agree with the SMR/NAS level tactics here.Everyone is trying to save a dollar, except the M disk was never meant to be cheap, so that just shows you the business ethics right there.

The switch-and-bait trick, previously with SSDs, is now happening to recordable media.

Reading through this yall are on another level with inspecting the products you guys buy. ' So your comment peaked my interest. What was the bait-and-switch with SSDs? How can I look for these issues today if they are still around?

Basically replacing key SSD components with cheaper ones, which in turn either makes the SSD slower and/or having less product lifetime.

is this common? are there brands that are known to still have high quality?

Fairly common and there is no "safe" brand (gotta do your research). Sometimes it works in the customer's favor (faster SSD, same model) but other times: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/326200-western-digital-caught-bait-and-switching-customers-with-slow-ssds

At the moment ...
SK Hynix has high-quality.
Samsung has some models with high-quality.
Western Digital has some models that are acceptable.
Rest are crap with good marketing.

High-quality goes beyond the drive performance and includes key features such as so-called ZRAT/DRAT (zero/deterministic read-after-TRIM) which is required for an SSD (SATA or NVMe) to actually mimic a spindle HD which is vital for RAID algorithms to work properly.
Not merely that, the drives also report their capabilities for such features and some drives ... lie.
If you pop in cheap Crucial drives, some of which lied about their caps, and RAID them you'll trash your data.

He went out of his way to purchase archival-quality disc which incur a significant cost increase over regular disc. Verbatim created a brand, M-Disc, to market and sell archival-quality disc. Given someone is doing that it necessarily means they care about the lifetime of the disc and are likely to pay more attention to the details.

For DVDs they changed the "dye" and require a drive with special M-Disc writing support - but reading is still (nearly) universal.
Blurays already use a non-organic dye so already have better archival properties. One change for M-Disc blurays is they used gold instead of a silver-alloy substrate to prevent corrosion.

The claim, and evidence presented, by OP is they have switched back to the silver-alloy under the M-Disc branding. The part number evidence suggest they are the exact same disc as normal recordable blurays.

Actually Millenniata created M-Disc, not Verbatim. Verbatim and Ritek are licensed to produce M-Disc media. I have been using M-Disc BD-R for over 10 yrs (started with DVD M-disc) when only Millenniata was producing them. I burned over 1000 M-Disc BD-R over that span with most of them being Verbatim M-Disc BD-R. I have never popped in a blu ray in my bluray players and have one fail to read or even have errors on it. I have both the Millenniata media ID and the Verbatim media ID, I am happy with the performance. I've used crap media before that would not play after 6 months, (being stored at normal temps and in cases), let alone years.

So your comment peaked my interest.

*piqued my interest

go back to school if spelling matters to you. thats the only place you will get gold stars for it.

You didn't spell it wrong. You used the wrong orange.

so where do we get legit mdissks now

The real issue is that M Discs are kind of snake oil at this point. They sort of made sense with DVDs, but it's unclear that they have any real benefit over standard BD-Rs. Plenty of people have pointed out that BD-Rs don't use organic dye, but they are also much harder and this more difficult to scratch than DVDs. Outside of manufacturing defects (which happen with M Discs too), you'll probably be dead before your BD-Rs start to fail.

I'm not convinced that Blu-Ray M Discs were ever anything more than marketing hype.

I never bought a single MDisc in my life. I don't need to store files for 1000 years. Good luck everybody else.

My regular DVD-Rs are still readable. Stored in paper sleeves and shoeboxes, nothing whatsoever special... created almost? 20 years ago, using some IDE drive, NEC ND1300A.

The files on them are readable (checksums match!) but completely irrelevant today. Low quality divx movies with hardsubs and what not. Back then, a hoarders treasure! Things were so difficult with slow internet.

Today, it's just trash.

Some of the stuff I years ago spent countless hours, days, months coding in PHP goes into oblivion with the new PHP 8 version this year. It's not compatible but I no longer have time or interest to update this software... so long & thanks for the fish.

Time flows like a river and history repeats...

Nearly all my self burned DVDs got corrupted over time.

I threw them all out :(

I agree on potential of manufacturing defects, but the use of inorganic dyes does not make them the same. The data layer is a glassy carbon material. It doesn’t use dyes. Though, it probably can scratch as do other blu ray discs.

The longevity is academically defensible and is independently tested with accelerated aging tests. Material science projecting longevity is nothing new and highly reliable. I think there is other things that can go wrong, like mechanical forces, but I wouldn’t dismiss the research claims / testing methodology.

This is concerning because as far as I know BD-R HTL (which was original BD-R design) meets same spec as M-Disc. But if what you are saying is true, they are using LTH (organic) which are vastly inferior to HTL.

I'm assuming this is the case for only the 25GB discs or is it the same for 50GB and 100GB? I also have some 128GB BD-R that aren't officially M-DISC, but BDXL. As far as I'm aware all BDXL are HTL so this may only be an issue with 25GB discs?

as far as I know BD-R HTL (which was original BD-R design) meets same spec as M-Disc.

Do you have any source for that, I've been looking and seem to find the opposite, both HTL and LTH use organic dyes and M-Disc doesn't...

HTL is inorganic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc_recordable#HTL_(high_to_low)

"Normal" BD-R discs use a composite (or, in the case of BD-RE, a phase-changing alloy) that decreases its reflectivity on recording, i.e. "High To Low".[30] Sony, for example, uses an inorganic[31] composite that splits into two laminar components with low reflectivity.[37]

https://digistor.com/not-all-blu-ray-discs-are-created-equal-but-does-bd-r-quality-matter/

Phase-change HTL media uses inorganic alloy or composite material for creating high quality Blu-ray discs. An inorganic recording layer means high resistance to the effects of UV light and aging, as well as high compatibility with multiple Blu-ray burners and Blu-ray players.

https://www.sony.net/Products/Media/dvdmedia/Accucore/Blu-ray/outline/index_05.html

They are not the same. I have been reading Barry Lunt’s papers for a while now and it seems to me that there is a lot of misinformation on M Disc. In particular that just by using inorganic dye would make a regular HTL disc equivalent. When it was first marked M Disc says it doesn’t contain organic dye - well, it actually doesn’t contain any dye at all (but I can see how the introduction of inorganic dyes would somehow be seen as a differentiator that M Disc can no longer claim)

The key is in the material. The glassy carbon layer. There is nothing like it and no independent tests that can claim the same. The accelerated aging test, while outrageous in its claim, is academically defensible. The claim is based on material science. It actually should last a lot more than 1000 years.

what you are telling is concerning, but you have to be sure in these assumptions before accusing the company with fraud, because of the legal consequences.

However even if it is true, nothing is likely is change until this issue gets some traction from multiple independent big media. When WD swapped the Reds to SMR, there were multiple reports about the problem in various forums. Still nothing happened for many months, until the main media sites picked up the story.

I think the best we can do about the issue is to report your findings to various IT news sites hoping that some of them consider it a worthy topic to start an investigation.

Verbatim made such significant changes to the manufacturing of the disc that it is readily apparent upon visual inspection with the naked eye and they changed the part number.

You are not asking for "more evidence". You are in denial.

German article about this thread and they contacted Verbatim
https://www.heise.de/news/Langzeitarchivierung-Verwirrung-um-die-M-Disc-7349953.html

However, when asked, Verbatim clarified that these media were further developments. The technical changes lead to a different appearance and the ability for higher burning speeds, the changed media ID is due to an adaptation to other Verbatim products. Verbatim has already delivered the first modified media at the beginning of 2022.
The data security of the new discs is not inferior to that of the old discs: According to the manufacturer, data should also last 1000 years.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This should definitely warrant a post edit to prevent spreading misinformation.

Indeed. Looks like another user made a new thread with the update. But who knows how many people that reaches.

u/JazzKazz might want to edit this thread.

So Verbatim lied to the press.
The tech used in these disc does not last 1000 years.
It doesn't last 100 years.

instead of selling real M Discs, Verbatim now puts their cheap organic BD-Rs into M Disc cases and charges M Disc prices for them

Verbatim BD-Rs with an organic layer

but regular organic layer Verbatim BD-Rs

customers being sold cheap organic layer BD-Rs

So, to be clear, all Blu-Ray discs are inorganic. There is a single exception to this, that is 'Blu-Ray LTH' discs, which are non-standard and require specific drive support to write and read them. Since these require specific write strategies, you really can't sneak them past the drive, it has to be told if it's LTH or not or it'll never burn right. But in short, never by LTH discs, they will be specifically labeled and are just about impossible to buy by accident. It also proved to be impossible to make multilayer LTH discs, so they never came in a size larger than 25GB

So, with that said, then you get into the meat of it... M-Disc blurays are not special. There was never special drive support required for them, they comply entirely with the Blu-Ray specs. That is to say, what ever 'secret sauce' is in the M-Disc Blu-Rays will work fine even in a drive that predates them. Since all Blu-Rays are inorganic as well, the advanced an M-Disc Blu-Ray offers is very questionable. It's quite possible it's just snake oil, just more expensive discs for suckers to spend more money on.

What about m-disc DVDs? Are these really requires special drive that has stronger laser to burn discs? They are better than standart DVDs?

'Real' CDRs and DVDRs use an organic dye for their data layer, this is 'less than shelf stable' for the long term though obviously results can vary but it's def less than ideal for long term storage. M-Disc DVD replaced that with a carbon based inorganic data layer which should be more shelf stable, and yes this required specific drive support to write but any DVD drive should read the discs.

M-Disc DVDs do indeed seem to be an improvement over vanilla DVDRs and CDRs. It's only Blu-Ray where the BDR discs already had a fundamental improvement in the materials used that makes M-Discs improvements questionable.

So companies (like WB, Sony etc.) can use m-disc DVD for Home Entertainment if they want?

Oh no, I think you're confused here, all of this talk about CDRs and DVDRs is just that, recordable discs.

Pressed discs? Like music CDs, computer games, movies? These are not recorded to a CDR or DVDR. These are 'pressed', like literally stamped out from a glass master that holds an impression of the data bits. Like, they are instead made more like how a coin is made. These discs also never used organic dye materials and are shelf stable by their nature.

Literally, a music CD or CDROM is nothing but a disc of polycarbonate plastic with microscopic holes pressed into its back side, the holes filled with a lacquer, a reflective metal applied to the the back and finally a silk screened logo/graphics ontop of that. That's it. And they can fire out tonnes of discs like these from the factory, no waiting for a burner to make them.

Any time people talk about discs and organic dyes, they are only talking about recordable media, not pressed retail media. These are all very stable by their nature as well.

Ohhhh. Thanks!

One of the changes made in the original BR M-disc was a gold substrate instead of a silver-alloy specifically to thwart "laser rot" caused by corrosion of the silver which will also destroy pressed disc over the time-scale of 1000 years.

May have I received some fake ones. The 25GB version with the blank, all white front face, same as the ones in the OP's linked images were sold and shipped Amazon UK. They have a silver'ish hue to them.

The 100GB single disk I received have the lighter gold'ish hue to them. The difference between them is clear to see. Plus the 100GB disk has blue labeling on the front face of them. They were purchased on the Amazon UK site and sold by Amazon Europe which came from Spain.

If you put the 25 GB disc in your drive, open your burning program and look for MID or DISC ID, it should say MILLEN (real M Disc). If it says VERBAT-IMe then the discs are fake. I've made a picture here that shows a real disc vs a fake disc: https://i.imgur.com/PT45YwC.jpg (Keep in mind this pic only applies to 25GB discs, I don't know about the MIDs of larger discs.)

You can use the fake discs, assuming that they'll work for you since half of my fake discs wouldn't burn, but be aware you'll just be burning a regular BD-R that is actually sold for much cheaper than M Discs.

I still use CD-Rs and DVD-Rs for media for my retro machines. Lately, the disks I’ve been getting are so thin and flimsy that you can see right through them and fails like 95% of all burns.

It’s getting harder and harder to find quality media these days :( sad to see this bullshit has made its way to the top of the blu ray media stack

HDDs: SMR vs CMR

Same shit, different day :(

Those bastards

This looks like a next level scumbag move!

Thank you for raising this issue!

Anyone know if this is true for 100GB BDXL M-discs as well?

I checked disks from 3 batches I purchased, in October 2022, February 2022, January 2019. All purchased on Amazon US.

All of them report media-id "VERBAT/IMk" Media looks very similar to 25GB disks that I purchased in January 2019 that read "MILLEN/MR1".

Not sure what to make of them now...

Anyone has 100GB disks that read "MILLEN/something" ?

I bought a new pack of Mitsubishi 100GB BD-R XL 'M-DISC' from amazon.co.jp link from a reseller (for 120$ 😭) just to test if it's 'real' m-disc because there was no mention at all of MABL on the packaging or description.

But sadly it doesn't seem to be real m-disc even though the packaging is completely advertising that it's 'M-DISC'. The Disc ID is 'VERBAT-IMk-000' and I also looked at the pictures where the real m-disc is a bit more golden but these discs seem to be more silver.

This is the full ImgBurn output if anybody wants to see it.

This one was the only 100Gb Verbatim m-disc which was still produced in Japan. All the newer ones from Verbatim are produced in Taiwan with inorganic MABL. So from this I think we can safely say that the only 'real' m-disc's are either 4,7Gb DVD-R or 25Gb BD-R. And these either from older Verbatim discs or current Ritek discs. Still have to test the Ritek disc's though so i'm not fully sure. But hopeful!

Its so sad because they are the best way to preserve your data

Well fuck I just ordered a bunch yesterday from amazon.

Update:

I bought one box of Verbatim MDISC DL (50G) from Amazon in April. Product delivered from Japan Amazon. 5 pieces costing about $22 USD

https://imgur.com/yRnQU5f.jpg

Disc ID: VERBAT-IMf-000

Refer to the circled portion in the picture.

For those who dun understand han/jap characters

  1. 100年以上 = 100 years and above,
  2. 原產地：台灣 = original country of manufacturing: taiwan
  3. 記錄層MABL = recording media layer using MABL (Metal Ablative Recording Layer)

So it seems that now the so called MDISC is made in Taiwan and the life span has reduced to 100 years from 1000 years. So most likely I guess they are rebranding HLT MABL BD-R as MDISC? perhaps those HLT MABL BD-Rs which pass stricter quality test. Looks like there is no longer "REAL" M-DISC being sold. So called "MDISC" are HTL MABL BD-R sold at a premium price. Should have just bought the non-Mdisc Verbatim MABL BD-R for cheaper price.

Bingo, this is the only real bit of information here, lol. The real change is that CMC has completely discontinued manufacturing BD-R media in Japan / closed the factory for good / the new old stock that was Made in Japan before the CMC sale finally ran out.

I used to think it was an extremely poorly kept secret that a regular Made in Japan Verbatim BD-R was just as good as the M-DISC, but I scrolled all the way down here from the top comment, and could see no mention of it, lol. M-DISC for Blu-Ray has always amounted to little more than snake oil (I'd take an old Panasonic or Verbatim MIJ disc over Ritek's M-DISC, every time). As the Japanese manufacturers closed up shop one by one, buying a Verbatim M-DISC quickly became an easy/no fuss way to get a guaranteed Made in Japan disc.

Now Panasonic is gone too. There are only two Made in Japan SKUs left that I'm aware of - JVC's LTH 25GB disc (lol, I wouldn't buy LTH if they were Made on the Moon!) and Sony's 128GB BDXL discs. The latter may likely only still be manufactured because they're still shoving a dozen of them into a professional looking cartridge and calling it 1.5 TB Optical Disc Archive Gen 1.

You can bet your cakebox that as soon as they sunset ODA G1 production, there will be no MIJ optical media left.

I want to update this comment, as it seems important to investigate the claims here. I took a deeper dive into the media in question. The Verbatim M-DISC “Fake” Discs are rated by the manufacturer at 100 Years of Life. That’s the Current Rating. I am presuming you are referring to Sony using the SKU: 10BNR4VAPS4

When looking up the Sony “Optical Disc Archive Cartridge Generation 1”, they rated for an Archival Life of “50 year(estimated)”. This leads users to believe Verbatim believes their archive material is superior to Sony’s archival material in terms of years of lifetime.Taiwan and Japan produce very high quality parts in terms of Motherboards, Electronic Devices, and Small Components. The “Made in Japan” Verbatim M-DISCs are no longer available, there’s nothing we can do about that unless we want to pay overpriced amounts for older media production.

I think it’s wise for consumers to accept what Verbatim is saying as the rated lifetime expectancy.We are still getting lots of Blu-Ray Movies Produced with BD-100. For Now, Production of Physical Media is still present. If M-DISC was snake oil anyway specifications wise, than consumers should buy the M-DISC “Fake” Discs. It’s all that we can get now in terms of life expectancy on optical media.

Of course, if CMC is lying about the discs meeting the specifications, that’s even more important. These Discs should be re-tested by the U.S. Department of Defense for sure. They still on some product listings such as on Amazon cite the previous “Department of Defense” report in the description. Verbatim directly only links for the “FAKE” M-Discs this report by a third party organization: https://www.verbatim.jp/download/products/mdisc/report_tl_j.pdf

Was thinking about buying mdisc but now I don't know which blueray disc I should get for a true worm back up

Probably Ritek or PlexDisc. Ritek has the most advanced Blu-ray Discs like BD-RE and BDXL. They all use inorganic dye so they won't be failing any time soon. My Ritek BD-RE has sealed/rounded edges too. M-Disc really doesn't mean anything these days.

since when do BDs contain any organic layer at all? That stopped after DVDs to my knowledge.

Don't care for M Discs, but thanks for your PSA!

Spread the word, this is fraud, plain and simple!

I had the first case in October 2022 with the pack of 5 that you can get here: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00P870NES

Externally, the packaging was indistinguishable from the previously ordered deliveries. It was only when I unpacked the foil and opened the jewel case that I became suspicious, since the type of printing on the blank in the inner ring differs from the original (black instead of light grey) and the coating on the underside also looked a lot shinier than usual. I then used the "Imgburn" burning program to display the disc ID of one of the blanks and it is actually completely different. In fact, it's the same as the "MABL"-branded BD-R's (VERBAT-IMe-000) sold by Verbatim, which are a lot cheaper. Although these are also provided with an inorganic coating or HTL polarity, this does not consist of a layer of rock and therefore does not offer the advertised durability of 1000 years. This can be seen even more clearly under a bright lamp if you turn the blank a little to the side. The coloring here is exactly the same as on the much cheaper BD-R's with the MABL logo on the jewel case. The "reflection layer" used here is also a lot more vulnerable and not as high-quality as that of the MDiscs, especially with regard to temperature fluctuations and the resulting oxidation behavior during long-term archiving. However, I have not yet had any failures with these blanks in connection with my Pioneer BDR-212EBK, but the error rate in test programs run using "Opti Drive Control" via the "Disc Quality" function is generally higher than that of the MDisc. Incidentally, the above-mentioned blanks have been around for many years and are just a further development for 12x and 16x burners of the original HTL blanks with the Disc ID "VERBAT-IMc-000", which have been around since 2011, i.e. much longer than the MDisc there. The latter usually always has the Millenniata Disc ID code "MILLEN-MR1-000" as an identifier.

At first I thought that this was a mixed-up factory batch, because after I complained about the 5-pack and ordered the 10-spindle instead, I was sent the correct blanks again. Last week, however, I got the cheaper version with the MABL discs in MDisc printing as a pack of 5 for the second time. Of course, I immediately complained about this and tried again with the 10 spindle, hoping that it would only affect the series in the jewel case. - Dandelion! Again, only the cheaper MABL discs came in MDisc packaging and, as in all cases before, from Amazon directly and not from a third party.

I've been burning with Verbatim almost exclusively for over 20 years now, and I'm really shocked by this underhanded approach to loyal customers who have good reason to believe in disc longevity. No matter how much the manufacturer can claim that this is a "further development" - at least according to what was said to Heise. I call it the amount for the customer and I have serious concerns that in the future we will even be sold the cheap organic LTH discs, which only last around 5-10 years on average, as MDiscs. Unfortunately, there is no serious alternative for Verbatim's HTL blanks that, as experience has shown, offers exactly the same reliability. However, Verbatim seems to see exactly this as an argument for being able to play off its market dominance over the customer in this way. That's why I would be in favor of a corresponding class action lawsuit, since it can't be that high-quality products can simply be tacitly sold as cheap ones from another range.

I will change my Amazon rating, which is now at the top and was apparently decisive for many buyers, to warn potential customers in future.

Did you find a way to purchase real M-Discs ?

File a case against them?

This is straight-up fraud.

Class action lawsuit time?

But it's also to be expected. This is capitalism. The goal is always maximum profit, while doing the bare minimum. M-Discs are probably a small and shrinking niche, so they may as well cash in on people by selling cheap discs for premium prices. It's the capitalism way.

As capitalism-induced problems go, this is not very serious. Crime, most wars, for-profit hospitals, for-profit prisons, incredibly price gouged insulin and drugs and a literally more or less endless list of horrible symptoms are all due to the same cause.

Still a shame, this makes the idea of burning your stuff onto M-Disc for archiving a non-starter. One more backup option removed.

Did you report to FTC?

I'm in Germany so FTC doesn't apply to me, I don't know if these fake discs are available in the US or if they're only running this scam in Europe, maybe M Disc buyers from the US can chip in with their experiences

if any of them were US sellers you might be able to, in any case I'm confident Germany has a similar regulator

[deleted]

And the GP definitely in the US.

Question Why do you use 25gb and not something bigger Those are always inorganic and you have more space haha

I remember when Verbatim were a good company that made good products, hasn't been the case for over 10 years now. I'm assuming they were bought out at some stage when recordable media (floppies, CDs and cassettes) were on the downturn, and that modern "Verbatim" products are just generic products with a verbatim logo slapped on.

There are also "verbatim" branded truck stop USB chargers and cables now

u/ctmagazin

As someone who recently purchased two m.disc burners to replace my blue ray burners.. wtf mayte

Hey /u/JazzKazz you made it to heise.de

https://www.heise.de/news/Langzeitarchivierung-Verwirrung-um-die-M-Disc-7349953.html

Gut gemacht :D

Lots of interesting discussions here.

I did some research on two of my purchases of Verbatim Blu-Ray M Discs at 25 GB from Amazon. (25 Discs per Set) (Canadian Amazon site)

Set 1: Purchased Mid-August 2022

Set 2: Purchased Mid-March 2023

"Verbatim M-Disc BD-R 25GB 4X with Branded Surface - 25pk Spindle"

I sampled one disc from each set of 25 discs.

Each disc had a gold shine on its undersurface.

Disc ID: MILLEN-MR1-000 [both discs]

Supported Write Speeds: 4x

I compared this M-Disc data to that of a standard 25 GB Blu-Ray from Amazon purchased about 3-4 years ago.

Standard BD-R 25GB

Disc ID: VERBAT-IMe-000

Supported Write Speeds: 4x, 6x, 8x, 10x, 12x

A predominantly silver shine on its undersurface, with a hint of gold.

The color differences were quite clear when discs were viewed side by side.

Hope this helps.

Hey, do you have any updates on this? This is pretty big stuff for all long-term data archivers such as me, who want to store their data on this . Do you have any experience with Millenniata brand M-DISCs?

As it stands in Europe real M Discs are long gone, I don't know about the US but I imagine it's the same there. If you want real ones I imagine the only way would be to buy older ones on ebay assuming anyone is seling them. As far as I know any discs branded Millenniata are real but I've never used them. I have a stack of 20 real discs left that I use sparingly for only important things and everything of lesser importance gets burned to regular BD-R.

Hey, thanks for getting back to me on this!

I cannot post the specific product link due to the sub's rules but Millenniatas that ship to Europe seem to be (at least somewhat) available on Amazon! Not sure if those are some rare dusty leftovers no one has managed to get their hands on yet, or if they are still decently available, but have a look yourself. Amazon also seems to have plenty in the US (found via the official M-DISC website) which they don't ship across the big lake, but I'd imagine going through a contact person in the USA might not be that difficult given enough effort.

One more question from my side would be whether you managed to look into the legal side of things in regards to the potential of false marketing on the side of Verbatim, and whether you see any options in trying to highlight this controversy (which so far seems to only go around in very small circles with ties to data hoarding).

Additionally, I think it would be worth a shot to reach out to Barry Lunt, the founder of M-DISC himself. From what I'm seeing, he works as a Director of School of Technology at the Brigham Young University (BYU) and seems to have ceased publishing academic papers not too long ago, so now I'd imagine he would be up to at least hear the community out on the issue of potential corporate tainting of his invention and maybe even speak out. Right now I am trying to find some more information on what exactly qualifies to bear the M-DISC label, and if Prof. Lunt is even aware of this issue right now.

This whole situation is quite tragic from my point of view. M-DISC is an amazing invention of an absolutely brilliant scientist and should not be lost and forgotten due to corporate greed.

Hopefully this can put closure to the speculation. Our organization is a databank and is a big user of mdisc for archiving. We reached out to Verbatim last week about this Media Identification Code (MID) discrepancy. Here is their reply, in their own words ---- "The creator of the MDisc technology- Millenniata went out of business in 2017, they sold the technology to Mitsubishi, who until 2019 owned Verbatim. Due to this, the stamper ID changed, but the formula & the disc materials stayed the same. Mitsubishi sold Verbatim & all the technologies to CMC in December of 2020. Verbatim is the only company authorized to sell the original technology. Any Millenniata discs available were all produced before 2017 when the company shut down and any other brand is not the original technology." ----- So there it is, mdiscs with either the 'VERBAT' or 'MILLEN' prefix are fine. Just different production periods. Cheers.

The "TM" part after "Verbatim" is what makes me believe that this really is a fake. Because 1. Verbatim has not used this naming before. 2. Verbatim is a company, not a trademark, to my knowledge. and 3. It looks like someone just copied the TM logo frim the M-disc mark without understanding its meaning.

Edit: Missed the part where Verbatim confirmed that "fakes" are genuine. Could it be that customer support was a "fake" Verbatim support?

I sent my original email to the Verbatim Europe and Verbatim Germany emails taken from their website, and a German support email wrote back complete with name of the person etc. I believed for the longest time too that these discs have to be fake and even argued with customer support back and forth but they swear they're real. These discs are available in every major retail chain in Germany, and I've confirmed that by ordering them myself as I've said in another comment. Verbatim faking its own product for whatever reason.

M for Manure-Disc

I don’t use M Discs, however I sent an email to them complaining anyway. At this point it appears to be them misleading their customers.

I'm completely out of the look but is M-Disc really an actual thing? About one of the only working pages on their website is just literal blog spam. Is there literally any actual proof these magical discs were better? This feel like the gold plated HDMI cables of the optical media world.

Used to be.

At least in the DVD days where the MDisc standard was definitely better for archival, due to using stable inorganic data layer rather than the unstable organic layer used on standard DVDs. they are proven to have lasted longer with early DVDs rotting and M-Discs still in perfect condition.

In the bluray world it's a bit different since a standard bluray disc uses inorganic metallics and are thus more stable and will last longer than DVDs, but in general M-Disc Blurays were considered a mark of quality and assurance that they were manufactured to a higher standard.

These days, I'm on the side of any good quality brand name bluray being just as good as an M-Disc, but some people still prefer the extra assurance that came with the standard.

Gold-plating is common in many connectors to prevent corrosion.
Let those cables sit around a house for 50 years then try to use them.
Most of use would just get new cables but if you are archiving a system then they are going to stop making the cables and you need something to last.

Similarly use of gold instead of silver for archival disc is to rule-out silver corrosion, a.k.a. laser-rot. M-disc incorporated a number of changes to prevent common, known degradation of the disc.

As it stands today, magnetic tape last longer than CDs and DVD-R's due to the dyes an materials used in their construction.

Archival-grade DVD+R's appear to last longer than tape.
Recordable blurays don't use the organic dyes of CDs and DVDs so their half-life lifetime appears to be on the order of 50 to 100 years. The M-Disc changes were to push the half-life to 100 years creating disc that could last up to 1000 years.

Welcome to Fuckin’ Capitalism

Under socialism you never get DVDs in the first place.
You wouldn't have toilets.
You wouldn't have antibiotics.

PS Socialism invented nerve-gas.

This is CRONYISM (just another form of communism) - hardly the free market of American capitalism. Thanks to useful idiots like yourself the free markets have been all but ended by these marxists and their bankster bosses. Stop listening to your dumass professors. They are not your friends.

Enjoy your lawsuit, this is a class action waiting to happen

What is an M disc for?

Stands for "millennium disc". Essentially a disc that will last 1000 years

Godamn, I thought I was going insane

I've got 11 of those and I've already burned them, I guess I'll need to replace them

Have Verbatim EVER been a reputable brand?

They were one of the more reliable vendors for 5-1/4" floppies.

This is a remarkably damaging claim, with zero actual evidence to back it up.

I certainly hope you're right on this, because while I'm quite certain they can absorb the cost of a huge corporate lawsuit, I'm not so sure you can.

What do you mean actual evidence? It’s in the post.

There is zero evidence that the new version of the media does not save properly, or for the specified amount of time. None.

We just have OP's word that it's a new color and identifies itself as a different id number in firmware.

The company claims that it is an equivalent product with no loss in quality. So it's 100% he-said-she-said. No proof from either of them.

OP may very well be right, and onto something egregious here. But it may also be their imagination when it comes to whether or not it's an inferior product. We simply have no way to know.

Yet, that is all besides the point I made. My point was that I hope OP can back up their claims, because if they can't, they could be facing a multi-million-dollar slander suit.

I'd hate to see a simple misunderstanding of fact turn into that. I just hope they're being careful, is all.

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It’s not slander until the person making the allegedly defamatory statements knows, or reasonably should know, that their statements are false before making them.

OP’s beliefs about Verbatim’s changes to product seem genuine.

Agreed. It’s getting really hard to sift through Reddit. I thought this sub would be more reliable

They switched back to manufacturing techniques known to fail earlier. The onus is on Verbatim to provide hard technical data from a 3rd party lab otherwise there is zero evidence their changes did not impact lifetime.

Scum tactic. They're really hoping someone doesn't notice.

Damn, I have some from the 2021 Black Friday sale last year, less than 200 left. Glade to know that they are the "real" discs, but I will NOT be picking up more from Verbatim this year, and I normally pickup 500+.

2021 could-be/should-be long enough ago that those are the original design.
Verbatim states the change was made in 2022.

You're telling me, my 25 Verbatim DataLifePlus are fake?

Ok, these disks are so durable, but how to read them after 50/200/1000 years?

There's no proof that M-Disc blurays ever lasted any longer than e.g. a normal Sony HTL disc. This is not the case however for the DVD version that was actually proven to last much longer.

Submit your findings to tech YouTube channels, and tech news sites. Maybe more data would surface and be confirmed. Pressure and bad press.

M-Disc is nothing more than a branding. Verbatim own the branding so they can put the label on any pack of discs they like and those discs become M-Discs.

Your allegations are akin to saying an Intel chip is a 'fake Celeron' or 'fake Pentium' because the performance bracket or number of cores etc is different to a previous Celeron. Nope. Intel control the Celeron branding, if they say a chip is Celeron then that's what it is.

M-Disc BD-R was bullshit marketing even before Verbatim bought the rights. The original M-Disc BD-R 25GB launched in 2014 was functionally and technically identical to a standard HTL BD-R.

They branded M-Disc to mean archival-quality lasting up to 1000 years.
Then they changed the product delivered to last <100 years while continuing to (falsely) claim they still last 1000 years.
That is fraud.

Why do you think the "product delivered" lasts "<100 years"? Can you point us to accelerated-aging tests indicating that?

They can't just "put the label on any pack of discs they like". They claim that their M-discs have passed testing at elevated humidity and temperature levels, which according to certain studies, that resulted in relevant ISO/IEC standards is equivalent to 1000 years of storage at standard conditions.

If the new M-Discs pass those tests, they are fine, no matter the color or MID. But if they'd call discs that did not pass that test "M-Disc", it would not be ok, no matter if they own the trademark.

They only claim this for the m-disc DVD , For all other M-Disc their only real claim is that they use an inorganic data Layer, which is true for Htl BD media .

now they no longer claiming 1000 years.. they are claiming 100 years. So technically we can't fault them. they can say the Mdisc, the letter M stands for MABL..

https://imgur.com/yRnQU5f.jpg

100年以上 = 100 years and above. So they will say they never claim their "MDISC" is the MDISC.

Well, their page for the 100 GB BD-R M-discs claims a bit more:

"Industriestandard-ISO/IEC 10995-Tests, die von Millenniata durchgeführt wurden, zeigen eine erwartete durchschnittliche Lebensdauer einer MDISC von 1.332 Jahren, wobei nur 5 % der Disks nach 667 Jahren Anzeichen von Datenverlusten aufweisen. Daher wird von einer Nutzungsdauer von mehreren hundert Jahren ausgegangen."

So, tests done according to ISO/IEC 10995 showed an expected life of 1332 years, with only 5% of discs showing first signs of failure after 667 years.

Gotta love Reddit incels that make up stories despite having no real evidence..

lawsuit.

Edit your post! You're wrong.

Looks like someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes!

What a loon. VERBAT-IMe-000 is HTL you can bloody well see it!

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This is what I think happened.

Verbatim may have discovered that selling MDISC as some media that can lasts 1000 years is an overkill. Normal people do not need something that lasts 1000 years. So instead they now are selling HTL MABL BD-R as MDISC and advertised as lasting for 100 years. Perhaps they done some tests and found out that HTL MABL BD-Rs can potentially last 100 years which will be enough for 99.9% of users. So now they no longer manufacture the REAL MDisc and are now rebranding HTL MABL BD-R as the new "MDISC" which is advertised to last 100 years but selling at REAL MDISC price. So sooner or later when ppl talk about MDISC, they are referring to MABL BD-R.

"1000 years" is the maximum lifetime.
They still have a 50% fall-out at 100 years.
The "100 year" disc is the maximum ... I don't recall off the top of my head what the 50% fall-out is but it's something like 10 or 20 years which is why they are not adequate for archival usage.

The "strategy" using 100 year disc is write two of everything and every 10 years re-write two new disc of everything. You'd want a quality-control step after each write as well to verify the BER is adequately low otherwise you toss that disc and make another one.

https://www.amazon.sg/Verbatim-Japan-VBR520YMDP10V1-Recording-Printable/dp/B09TKLV7TY/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pl_foot_top?ie=UTF8&th=1

From Verbatim Japan:

M-DISC, Lifetime Storage Disc

The BD-R is built to last for a long time.

The M-DISC, a lifelong storage disc is created to last a long time, such as shows that your favorite idols, children's sports events, school entrance ceremonies, weddings, etc.

Uses high hardness titanium, which is more resistant to aging due to light, heat, and humidity, and has a lifetime shelf life of over 100 years.

(*) This is a highly reliable disc with increased durability that allows you to store data.

Based on international standard ISO/IEC 16963 measurement standards

Adopts high hardness titanium, strong construction for excellent durability.

Added layer of "titanium" for high strength and durability

The titanium layer provides strong protection from moisture intrusion into the disc, protects the recording layer from heat and humidity changes, ensuring high precision recording and long-term preservation.

ISO/IEC 16963

Interesting. Thank you.

What is the "Disc ID" for these new discs you purchased ?

Disc ID: VERBAT-IMf-000

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/13693k0/new_definition_of_mdisc_lasting_100_years_and/

I hope everyone here got balls to sue this company.