M-Disc 4.7GB packaging has gone downhill

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

A lady donated 2 cases (1,000 discs) of inkjet printable M-Disc 4.7GB to my Archive. I was very grateful as I had cut out buying M-Disc 4.7GB for my VHS Archive over a year ago after they jacked the price up from $2.10 to $3.06 per disc. The distribution for 4.7GB M-Disc is terrible, not much competition and priced is pretty fixed.

Now, the discs look to be the same and the earlier discs. The problem is with the packaging. One case of discs had the usual bottom plastic disc floater replaced by a paper-thin piece of plastic at the bottom of the spindle. That was fine, not an issue. The next case of discs had nothing. The bottom disc rested on the bottom of the spindle. All the discs in that case had scratches on the bottom disc. So, 20 discs had defects due to poor packing.

Maybe they forgot to put in the thin plastic liner in one case or maybe they just cheapened up even more and thought a paper-thin piece of plastic was too much cost or used too much wasted crude oil...dunno.

As far as M-Disc themselves?

They are as archival as you can get with optical media and archiving digital data. I've used them for many years and have done extensive torture testing of M-Disc of all sizes. It is just too bad there is not more competition with engraved optical media / engraved quartz. Verbatim used to make affordable, branded 4.7GB M-Disc that were good. But they discontinued the 4.7GB M-Disc around +/- 2020.

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Damage from recent storm...thousands of trees down!

Photo: D.D.Teoli Jr.