It’s 2025, and Sony has announced that it will stop producing Blu-ray media, MiniDiscs, MiniDiscs Data, and miniDV tapes. The company made this move just months after it discontinued its 5.5TB Optical Disc Archive cartridge.
The future of blank media now looks uncertain. Streaming offers many benefits, but physical media still provides better quality in some cases. It also gives users direct access to their content without relying on an internet connection.
Sony Blu-ray Faces a Changing Market
Several companies still sell Blu-ray media, including Verbatim, Smartbuy, and Ridata. However, I believe the future of Sony Blu-ray looks uncertain.
Demand for blank discs continues to fall. At the same time, other storage options are becoming more popular. These include external hard drives, portable hard drives, and portable SSDs.
As a result, it is difficult to see what will replace optical discs as a common storage option.
Optical discs also become less reliable as they age. The Canadian Conservation Institute estimates that BD-R discs can last between five and 10 years on average. That could be a problem for people who use Blu-ray discs for long-term storage.
Several factors can affect the life of an optical disc. These include humidity, temperature, storage conditions, and the quality of the recording dye.
Tape Could Survive as Long-Term Storage
For on-premise data storage, tape may have the best chance of surviving and growing.
Hard drives work well for storage needs in the low hundreds of terabytes. However, helium-based hard drives also have a limited lifespan.
Western Digital says the helium inside its drives remains contained throughout the drive’s operating life. That life typically lasts between five and 10 years.
Solid-state storage offers another option. However, SSDs remain expensive for backups larger than 10TB.
Other storage technologies also exist. These include glass, silica, ceramic, DNA, and holographic storage. However, tape remains one of the most established options.
The leading format is LTO, or Linear Tape Open. It is an old technology, but it remains widely used today.
LTO Offers High Storage Capacity
The current LTO-9 generation can store 18TB on one tape. LTO-10 is expected to offer between 24TB and 36TB per tape.
The 2022 roadmap also included Gen 14, with a possible capacity of up to 576TB per tape. IBM and Fujifilm demonstrated a tape with this level of capacity in 2020.
LTO is already popular for long-term cold storage. Data centers and large organizations use it to store large amounts of data.
Some of the world’s largest technology companies also support the format. Therefore, LTO is unlikely to disappear soon.
Tape does have some drawbacks. LTO drives are expensive, and users can only access data on a tape in a linear way.
However, LTO media is cheap compared with other storage options. It can cost less than $5 per TB. It is also easy to store and can last for up to 30 years.
Could LTO Become More Popular?
A cheaper LTO drive could make the format more attractive to data hoarders. Right now, however, the cost remains a major barrier.
The cheapest LTO-9 internal drive costs more than $4,300. It also uses a SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface, which many workstations do not support.
An external enclosure can increase the total cost to more than $5,000.
In 2022, we reviewed an LTO-9 drive from OWC. While LTO has clear advantages for long-term storage, its high hardware cost remains a major challenge.
As Sony moves away from blank optical media, the storage market will continue to change. Sony Blu-ray may become harder to find, while technologies such as LTO could remain important for people who need large and long-term storage.
