Restaurator: Blu-Ray Media Stability and Suitability for Long-Term Storage

Restaurator (International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material) has published an article written by Joe Iraci, Canadian Heritage, Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Abstract: “The most recent generation of optical disc media available is the Blu-ray format. Blu-rays offer significantly more storage capacity than compact discs (CDs) and digital versatile discs (DVDs) and thus are an attractive option for the storage of large image or audio and video files. However, uncertainty exists on the stability and longevity of Blu-ray discs and the literature does not contain much information on these topics. In this study, the stabilities of Blu-ray formats such as read-only movie discs as well as many different brands of recordable and erasable media were evaluated. Testing involved the exposure of samples to conditions of 80 °C and 85 % relative humidity for intervals up to 84 days. Overall, the stability of the Blu-ray formats was poor with many discs significantly degraded after only 21 days of accelerated ageing. In addition to large increases in error rates, many discs showed easily identifiable visible degradation in several different forms. In a comparison with other optical disc formats examined previously, Blu-ray stability ranked very low. Other data from the study indicated that recording Blu-ray media with low initial error rates is challenging for some brands at this time, which is a factor that ultimately affects longevity.“