Buffalo ends production of external USB Blu-Ray drives

Buffalo Japan has discontinued production of its external USB Blu-Ray recorders, including the BRXLPT6U3E, BRXLPTV63B, and BRXLPTWOU3 series. This follows announcements by LG, Pioneer, and Sony in recent years announcing their exit from the optical disc market.

While businesses and consumers can store valuable files on hard drives, solid state drives, flash drives, tape, and cloud storage, few storage formats can reliably store data for over a decade. Hard drives are vulnerable to mechanical failure of their motors while SSDs and flash drives are subject to electron migration failure within a decade. Cloud storage can be a good second backup, but no provider guarantees 100% backup reliability for decades. Tape and optical discs can keep data intact for decades when kept in the proper environment.

Blu-ray discs use an inorganic recording layer that does not degrade as easily as the organic dye layer used in recordable CDs. This gives BD-R discs better resistance against degradation when exposed to sunlight, humidity, and extreme temperatures, with a predicted lifespan of at least half a century according to Panasonic.

Businesses and readers who want to ensure their photos and data remain accessible decades later should make multiple backups to multiple media kept in different locations. They should also schedule the duplication of such data to new media every half decade or so to counter eventual media failure.

Readers interested in using Blu-ray discs can buy a pack of Verbatim BD-R discs and an LG Blu-ray recorder on Amazon.