New DVD discs claim 1,000 year life

The recording surface of Millenniata's M-DISC is virtually indestructible. The company claims that its DVD drive–readable discs will last for ... wait for it ... 1,000 years. That's what the Provo, Utah, firm says, anyway. The deal is that the disc has a different recording medium and method than the lasers and dyes used by …

[Fuzz]

capacity

"Millenniata says it can store three hours of video, 1,200 photos, or 100,000 documents, which might mean anywhere in the 20 to 50GB range."

Nope, 1200 photos, three hours of video, sounds like a standard 4.7GB DVD to me.

[Lance 3]

Capacity

Hours means nothing in terms of capacity. I could fit three hours of video on a CD. Nothing says it is high quality. The bit rate is what matters.

Look at HD; it deals more with resolution and not bit rate. If you take a 1080 uncompressed feed, you won't get an hour of it on any Blu-Ray disc. An hour of uncompressed 1080 is 834GB.

Some cameras are capable of producing 138MB images. 138MB x 1200 = 165,000MB or 165GB.

Given that they call it a DVD, yes it is 4.7GB unless it is a dual layer disc. Regardless, they are limited to what a DVD reader can read and thus, 4.7GB on a single layer disc.

[Anonymous Coward]

The recording industry will have you shutdown in an instant my friends!

What, you mean people won't be buying replacement discs when theirs go wrong after a few years? We can't have that!

[LaeMing]

Except

Stamped media (such as the recording indurtry generally sells) lasts even longer (if looked after). Their problem will be with all the downloaded rip disks lasting longer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't CDs supposed to be "indestructible"

I remember seeing them being touted as capable of playing music clearly even though they were scratched and caked in dirt. Willing to be these babies are about as "long lived"

[Steve K]

Tomorrow's World

I remember Tomorrow's World in 1983 or so where Judith Hann showed how you can put jam (or maybe marmalade, but I digress) on the top of a CD and still play it.

Great marketing for the CD format and technology, but failing to notice that it was actually read from underneath......

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh

Still not as long lived as paper and at least you will still be able to read that paper in a 1000 years

[Steven Roper]

In most cases, you won't

The most common kind of book, the pulp paperback, won't last 100 years, let alone 1000. Most book paper contains sulphates which react with moisture in the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid, which breaks down the paper fibres. This is why book paper turns brown over time - the brown is the sulphuric acid impregnating and corroding the paper.

I have several much-loved paperbacks from my childhood; the oldest one, a copy of Enid Blyton's "Five Fall Into Adventure", dates back to 1974. Its pages are quite brown with age and the paper is already starting to crumble in places - and this is a book that is 37 years old. It'll crumble to dust in the next 20-30 years at the very outside, most likely sooner.

So paper isn't the enduring storage medium you might think it is. Parchment or papyrus maybe, but we have yet to invent anything that will outlast the good old carved stone tablet. ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it is a till receipt or card payment slip

Which you need as proof of purchase for your warranty claim, but which will have faded to blank paper four months before the warranty expires.

[Cliff]

Money back

if in 1000 years you cannot read your disc*

(*guarantee period exactly 1000 years, premature redemption not allowed. Non-transferrable)

;-)

[Tzael]

Dive by 10, or 100?

Given the supposed longevity of the original CDs and DVDs, should we just divide the supposed lifetime by 10 to get a more realistic figure?

[LaeMing]

Depends a bit on the tech used, too.

The 3-5 years quoted for current recordable media is worst-case with the cheapest crappiest media you can lay hands on (though since that is what most people buy, I won't call shinanigans on the figure). Decent media lasts around 5-7 years for re-writable and 10-15 for write-once, in my experience. You can also get quite expensive 'archival grade' media with dyes guarenteed for 50 years, but try convincing the bean-counters to foot that bill - though asking them to recover a 10yo record from optical archives may convince them!

I very much want one of these myself, but doubt I could really justify the cost for my occasional usage. Fortunately my manager at work was discussing issues of HDD vs Optical archiving with me yesterday and we certainly could justify one (or three) at work, and I am happy to pay for my own media if I can use the drives at work to burn them.

[Paul McClure]

Nothing like hype to sell a product.

"Although the discs could last 1,000 years, if Millenniata's modelling is right, whether DVD drives will still be around then is another question. Excuse me, but I have a stack of punch cards. Does anyone have a punch card reader...?"

Exactly.

I recall the purveyors of DVD and Bluray describing a life span greater than five years. Were they hyping like this company? I think I have a few DVD's older than that.

[LaeMing]

Give me an Arduino and payment for my time developing the device,

and I will read your punch cards fine. (Technically, learning to read them by eye should be no harder than depyphering any obscure ancient language we still have some references for).

Poor choice of example, but the point in general is more sound, though, building a crude but working DVD-reading device would be well within the capabilities of any undergrad EE student provided a record of how the thing works is postered on the archive wall somewhere (if there are no EE students by that time, then it is unlikely anyone will really be interested in the disk contents anyway).

[hplasm]

Give me a bunch of transistors

Like the original readers used...

[The Indomitable Gall]

Give me a scanner...

... and a nice contrasty backing sheet.

And there's the reason it will last: new technology will always be hackable to read old technology.

Looking at the physical burn marks, I imagine this disc won't really care what colour of laser is used to read it, which would make it more future proof than CDs and DVDs, which I'm told aren't colour-compatible with BluRay, meaning current-gen players often need two lasers.

It may be that in 1000 years (or even just 100!), you read your old discs with a general-purpose laser-scanner or electron microscope, getting a full physical image of the disc (just like scanning punchcards) and then processing this. This would also be a better solution for damaged discs anyway, as the track layout can be recreated so that one damaged block doesn't mangle a whole section of the data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Natural Aging

As I have only deteriorated by about 1% in the last 300 to 350 days, I can confidently expect to live for ten thousand years, then.

I wish I had a rock-like layer, though.

Hang on! Doesn't approximately 1% in approximately 1 year mean I'll be lucky to still be around in a mere 100 years?

[Snobol4]

Re: Natural Aging → #

Depends on whether you continue to degrade at 1% of your current state each year - then you'll live for ever !

[Niall Mac Caughey]

& the glue?

The polycarbonate may be long-lasting and the pits may be almost immortal, but what about the glue that holds the layers together?

How long before that goes nice & yellow?

[Anonymous John]

But how long will we be using DVDs?

They're bound to be replaced by something better long before then.

[AndrueC]

You might be missing the point

..storage technology might have moved on but the data could still be stuck on old media. That's kinda the whole point about this article. We probably will be recording HDNSIs (Hyper Definition Neural Streaming Imprints) on SAGECs (Sub Atomic Grid Encoded Cube)s but that's irrelevant if you are hoping to watch 'PARIS Goes Orbital' that your great-great-great-great-great-grandad stored on a DVD.

Windows icon because Windows will still be around in 1,000 years time :D

[hurtlebum]

Readable by standard DVD drive?

I am obviously missing something here, the article says it claims to be readble by normal DVD drives, yet later suggests a storage capacity of 20-50 gigs. Not sure how that works...

[TeeCee]

Re: Readable by standard DVD drive?

Well, it did mention that both DVD and Blu-ray were candidates for this technology.

I just assumed that a BD would need to be read in a BD drive meself.....

[Blubster]

Are they

Offering refunds if they pack in after 500 years?

[Anonymous Coward]

3 to 5 years...

I have DVD-Rs older than that with no signs of degradation, kept in wallets, out of direct sun at room temperature. So were these hypothetical test discs that failed after 3 to 5 years left out in the sun? In a hot room?

Sounds like another marketing pitch.....

[Not That Andrew]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

And I have a 4 year old Win XP install disc, kept in a dark, cool place that is only good as a coaster. And an ancient Win95 disc that spent much time out a desktop that works fine. It varies, but optical discs are only reliable for 5 years.

[LaeMing]

Media type

Was the WinXP disk a writable (or even RW, for shorter life still)?

The Win95 disk was most likely a stamped disk (lasts practically forever).

A CD is not a CD-R is not a CD-RW, even if they all read on the same drive.

[Not That Andrew]

I know the difference

It was an original disc, direct from Microsoft.

[Andus McCoatover]

I have a Windows ME disk.

Unfortunately, it's still readable...

[Pen-y-gors]

That's the big problem

> Although the discs could last 1,000 years, if Millenniata's modelling is right, whether DVD drives > will still be around then is another question. Excuse me, but I have a stack of punch cards. Does > anyone have a punch card reader...?

At least with punch cards all you need to read them is an eyeball - deciphering is a little bit messy but still much simpler than Linear B! And punched cards usually had the content printed along the top anyway. But with an MPEG-encoded video written as billions of little pits??? I don't think so. How many people still have the kit around to handle 8in floppies? or 3inch Amstrad WP stiffies? This is a useful step forward, but I think you need to store material in a very simple uncompressed encoding for it to have any chance of being readable in 1000 years!

[ps2os2]

Punch Cards

I hate to disappoint a lot of you but the larger the data center the more likely it is to have a card reader. Grant you not 1000 cards per minute but a respectable 250 cards a minute.

[Bango Skank]

.... yes but will there be a drive to read it in ten?

We went through this same movie with 8" floppies, GCR tape, and countless other technologies that had miracle coatings and whatnot guaranteed for some huge number of years, or "life" (whatever that meant).

The problem was of course that unlike paper or even fiche that only require a modicum of technology, the others all require great hunks of technology that is almost guaranteed to be unavailable in the near future even if solar radiation doesn't flip the bits until they are a pile of gibberish.

One can read a clay tablet written in cuneiform that is millenia old, but good luck finding a DVD drive in another twenty.

The only response to this kind of hype is "bollocks!"

[John Sturdy]

I prefer it this way round

I'd rather that media last as long as the equipment needed to use them, than expire prematurely. This way, as long as DVD drives are around, you can read the disks. When something else comes along to supercede DVD technology, at least there'll be some warning time when you're aware that it's time to migrate your archived data --- much better than having something on a DVD that you'd forgotten to make a fresh copy of, but turns out to have expired when you try reading it.

[Joe User]

In other words...

The M-DISC is the digital equivalent of a stone tablet (wrapped in plastic).

[Destroy All Monsters]

Yeah!

Sounds good though one has await until confirmation comes in that the marketing chicken has indeed managed to cross the reality road.

"Does anyone have a punch card reader...?"

No, but I'm sure one an A-Team could wire one up over the weekend, with pure optical lecture and all. In the future, I would expect that to pull a physical image of the 2000-year-old disk you found behind the plaster wall into memory at 1nm³ voxel size should be possible with your handheld tricorder.

And then it turns it it contains porn.

[LaeMing]

Good point there

Why build a physical reader when you can 3D-scan the platter and program a 3D image filter to act as as a virtual one?

[annodomini2]

Title we don't need no stinking title

Me thinks you'll struggle to fit a disc that thick in a dvd burner! ;)

[Martin 71]

Pedantry ahoy!

We measure 'power draw' in 'watts' not 'volts' :-)

119v is likely the utilization voltage, meaning 'useless outside north america'

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit

Too many man made materials have claimed long life only to fail well before their advertised end of life. No one can beat nature and their is no monetary incentive to in the capitalistic model. Real fibres made from flax have lasted centuries in pyramids. Synthetic fibres and plastics from the hardware store are shot to hell in only a year and a half to three in use.

I'll believe it when my cryogenically preserved head is revived 1000 years from now and I see it.

[Steven Roper]

Ah, yes, the Paradox of Plastic

"Synthetic fibres and plastics from the hardware store are shot to hell in only a year and a half to three in use."

Yet those same synthetic fibres and plastics will still be clogging up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 50,000 years from now. Plastic is a weird substance that outlasts plutonium yet somehow becomes useless within the lifespan of an ant.

[AndrueC]

Like carrier bags

Last week I opened an old drawer under my desk to find it full of a mysterious white shredded substance. Apparently an old Tesco carrier had 'gone biological' all over the inside of the drawer and its contents.

I suppose it depends on the particular plastic in use. Presumably these DVDs won't be using the same type as Tesco :)

[hplasm]

Only to discover that

Philip J Fry has used it as a coaster.

[stucs201]

I like the simplicity

Theres a certain genius is writting discs the way someone without much technical knowledge might assume they're written. Burning holes with lasers FTW.

[Raz]

None offered

That's what's happening with the recordable optical media now. A laser is burning holes in a material, except instead of stone, it's an organic dye. Which dye, sooner or later, rots. Supposedly the stone doesn't. But they may need a laser way more powerful to punch holes in stone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution?

Trouble is the armpit bacteria from the PFY will only require 50 years to evolve into micro-organistic M-DISC munchers, less if he keeps using the Lynx. ;-)

[Andy Tunnah]

o rly ?

just to test this out i dug out a dvd i burned in 2002, plays absolutely fine

LIES, ALL LIES

[MacroRodent]

Great idea, but not so new

Maybe not many would not own these devices privately, but I think it would a great business for photo stores to offer to burn customer's shots on these to make archival copies. I know I would use such a service occasionally.

The concept by the way sounds like the one I read back when I was studying over 20 years ago, and attended a seminar on optical data storage: Some of the earlier laser data disks used a similar process of punching actual holes into a metal foil embedded in the disk, if I remember correctly. These were not DVD:s or even CD:s, but larger proprietary disks used for data archiving. Too bad I cannot find the reference right now. Might be in my dusty study notes in the attic...

(No doubt that will not prevent M-DISK from getting a patent on this anyway).

[Zog The Undeniable]

Pedant alert

You don't measure a "power draw" in volts.

[James Ashton]

Disks Last ... Companies Fail

I wonder how M-DISC is different from Cranberry from 2009. The press release said "DiamondDisc: Stone DVDs Will Last 1,000 Years"; see:

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/diamonddisc-stone-dvds-will-last-1000-years/

but the company is apparently stone dead in less than two. The similarities of the product are so great that I'm betting the same tech is being re-incarnated at some level. Google finds me:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/NEWS/1257446173.html

so this is the rebirth of a product that's been around for a while.

It's a shame something like this is taking so long to come to market. I guess most consumers have no idea just how bad burned optical media really is until they find years of irreplaceable digital photos and movies gone. I found the Cranberry $35 per disc offer tempting but never gave it a try.

[JadedIdealist]

Small Children.

It will last 1000 years, or 20 minitues in the hands of a 3 year old.

The child catcher because - well...

[annodomini2]

Re: Small Children

"20 Minutes" - Optimist I see

[TeeCee]

1000 years from now.....

"Good thing these last a long time. Right I'll just load it into my 20,000,000x read BD drive."

<WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ>

<Sound of disc disintegrating>

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh bloody hell

The people of the 31st Century will risk the emo equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant when they uncover working copies of the 'Twilight' movies in their archaeological digs. The poor buggers.

[wired_retired]

I'm waiting for Star Wars on M disks

Come on George, issue Star Wars on these. Lovely money..!!

[The Indomitable Gall]

Star Wars, last a thousand years?

Why heavens no! Then he'd never get the chance to re-edit it and sell it to you again.