Start-Up Claims Immortality For Data With 'Stone-Like' Disc 261
CWmike writes "Start-up Millenniata and LG plan to soon release a new optical disc and read/write player that will store movies, photos or any other data forever. The data can be accessed using any current DVD or Blu-ray player. The M-Disc can be dipped in liquid nitrogen and then boiling water without harming it. It also has a Defense Department study (PDF) backing up the resiliency of its product compared with other leading optical disc competitors. The company would not disclose what material is used to produce the optical discs, referring to it only as a 'natural' substance that is 'stone-like.' Like DVDs and Blu-ray discs, the M-Disc platters are made up of multiple layers of material. But there is no reflective, or die, layer. Instead, during the recording process a laser 'etches' pits onto the substrate material."
This story certainly has immortality (Score:2)
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A Mr. F. Flintstone of Bedrock writes in to say: "But ... we had these when I was a kid and stored movies on them. Only they were flat, and on cave walls."
"there is no reflective, or die, layer." (Score:2)
Would that be "dye"?
Or have we renamed it the "die layer" with hindsight?
Been done... (Score:2)
... years ago:
http://lalists.stanford.edu/lad/2008/01/0446.html [stanford.edu]
For some reason I got accused of being silly about the issue of selling media containing GPLed software...
What? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah ... /me rushes out and buys one tonight at Best Buy because, you know, the last fourteen computers, MP3 players and PDAs i've owned all died in the vats of liquid nitrogen around my house - for some stupid reason I keep dropping stuff in those.
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In fairness, I think all of us have accidentally dropped a consumer device in water or let it sit on a dashboard on a hot day. While this technology may not initially be useful for regular devices, eventually we may come to benefit from it.
In fairness, liquid nitrogen and water share very few properties. Nor is the convection of boiling water and radiation of solar energy affecting a solid the same way. /. in the past. I can't tell you w
Extreme conditions make for good press releases and irritating slashdot summaries. Simulating 200+ years of real decay is neither provable or disprovable. A "forever" product only needs to last as long as it's remembered. I can remember reading about three "archival" optical/magnetic/whatever media products on
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1) Will a 3 ft drop to a concrete floor break it? How many such falls can it withstand?
2) If I rub the readable side with sand paper, will it get damaged? How long will it hold? Can the data still be recovered?
3) How variable is the temperature range it is supposed to stored in? What happens if there is power outage and I cannot maintain the range for 1-2 weeks?
4) Ditto for moisture, and general exposure to air & water.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
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Assume it is multiple layers of synthetic diamond or sapphire. Sapphire crystal is used to make some damn impervious stuff [youtube.com].
How do you think something like that would hold up to your scenarios?
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I know this is a revert to older technology, but for price of disks like this, maybe going to a caddy-based mechanism for the DVD writer might be a good idea, and have the disks shipped in caddies? This way, the media would not have to leave the caddy, greatly decreasing the chance of getting scratched. Of course, the media can be removed from the caddy to be read on a normal CD/DVD drive.
For long term archiving, this would be a good idea, as the biggest enemy in most environments to optical media are scr
They requested modified testing to get the numbers (Score:3)
They requested modified testing to get the numbers
Basically, modified ECMA-379 testing, starting with known good discs (where the write was initially verified to be good) with testing limited to 85C temperature and 85% relative humidity profile testing, with the addition of full-spectrum light in order to make the dye substrate more vulnerable to phase-change from humidity lensing of the light.
The two key elements of the Millenniata test which differ from ECMA-379 are
consideration of the initial write quality of the discs selected for testing, and the
introduction of full spectrum light to the test environment.
...or to put it into slash-terms: any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to a rigged demo. I'm not say
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Be careful when you hold the baby.
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Yeah ... /me rushes out and buys one tonight at Best Buy because, you know, the last fourteen computers, MP3 players and PDAs i've owned all died in the vats of liquid nitrogen around my house - for some stupid reason I keep dropping stuff in those.
That was obviously a reference to climate change. Global warming does not mean that it will get uniformly hotter, but that the temperatures become more extreme at both ends of the range. Hence it will get as cold as liquid nitrogen in Winter and as hot as boiling water in Summer.
So it will be nice to know that our data will survive, even if we won't stand a chance.
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Yeah ... /me rushes out and buys one tonight at Best Buy because, you know, the last fourteen computers, MP3 players and PDAs i've owned all died in the vats of liquid nitrogen around my house - for some stupid reason I keep dropping stuff in those.
That was obviously a reference to climate change. Global warming does not mean that it will get uniformly hotter, but that the temperatures become more extreme at both ends of the range. Hence it will get as cold as liquid nitrogen in Winter and as hot as boiling water in Summer.
So it will be nice to know that our data will survive, even if we won't stand a chance.
I didn't see any reference at all to climate change in his post. To me it was a sarcastic point that being able to survive being dipped in liquid nitrogen is a bit excessive, because no one keeps liquid nitrogen around the house. See, it's called sarcasm.
Nor did I see anything in the summary that would point to climate change. I think they were simply showing that if it can survive going from liquid nitrogen to boiling water, it will survive 10 years in your non-climate controlled storage shed.
Or were yo
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See, it's called sarcasm.
Well, speaking of which... I mean, I'm sure you're responding to something perfectly serious
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How'd that happen?
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How'd that happen?
Well, you can say that again!
As to the GP... Man, I really hope he wasn't serious, but my sarc meter read nothing as I was reading his post. If he was sarcastic, I need to have my sarc meter re-WHOOSHED.
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If he was sarcastic, I need to have my sarc meter re-WHOOSHED
The giveaway was the idea that global warming would bring Winters down to -200C and Summer up to 100C. Those figures may be a tad exaggerated.
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you too?
what gets me is every time I have liquid nitrogen and boiling water in close proximity I never think its a bad idea.
Bedrock: (Score:5, Funny)
I think this is how Fred Flintstone's instant camera worked.
Re:Bedrock: (Score:5, Funny)
M-Disc
Meet the M-Disc
It's modern stone-age data storage, you need
M-Disc
Meet the M-Disc
It will store your data till the human race is history
Let's write the data on a piece of stone-like strata
Thanks to the guys at Millenniata
When you use the M-Disk
Your data will last a life time
Even more than a life time
Your data will last a long ass time!
Is my boredom showing?
Re:Bedrock: (Score:4, Funny)
I'm still waiting for beaver shots of Betty.
Re:Bedrock: (Score:4, Funny)
Would that be better than a Betty shot of Beaver? "Ward... don't you think you were a little hard on the Beav last night?"
Immortal Reader As Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Immortal Reader As Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the microscopy capabilities of the present, much less the future(assuming we aren't fighting wars for canned goods and desperately holding off the murderous rat-men, in which case it probably doesn't matter), getting a complete image of the pits and lands on the disc surface would merely be a matter of considerable tedium. From there, with knowledge of the standard, it would be an image processing task to recover the data(and, of course, those would have to be stored in a known format, not some encrypted nonsense that depends on a keyserver that went offline during the transgene crusades of 2031)...
The same is largely true of magnetic media. Having a device that costs $20, hangs off a contemporary bus, and is designed to handle the medium sure is handy; but a microscope and some patience is a functional substitute.
Re:Immortal Reader As Well (Score:4, Funny)
But if we're talking movie DVDs, you've got CSS to deal with. That would probably ensure that none of our pop-culture survives millennia. Thank god...
Re:Immortal Reader As Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Whether anybody would bother is much less clear.
Re:Immortal Reader As Well (Score:5, Funny)
Archaeologist: It appears the ancients worshipped a god known only as "RFC", whose commandments were numbereed consecutively. There is some confusion as to whether these were taken as literal commandments or spiritual allegories; while some seem to dictate simple enough standards for a (primitive) digital society, a few seem distinctly implausible, involving e.g. using pigeons for data transfer; some researchers contend these were wholy allegorical, while others suggest these were actual ceremonies carried out at religious festivals known as "cons".
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You honestly think that future generations wouldn't be able to access information on how devices from the past worked and rebuild them after that?
There must be one major disaster if we ever reach a stage where this happens.
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That said -- information and devices for the retrieval thereof are small and ubiquitous enough that I'd be surprised to see a global war with human survivors reset the clock entirely. Nuclear warheads are expensive, and there are certainly large populated areas lacking target value to nuclear-armed nations -- even if the popularity of devices is low, it just takes one village full
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I would hope in 2,000 years your average archaeologist would have the tools to scan the disk at a molecular level and have an AI extract any important information based on historical archives of data formats.
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I would hope in 2,000 years your average archaeologist would have the tools to scan the disk at a molecular level and have an AI extract any important information based on historical archives of data formats.
"Esteemed Instructor. I have found a stone disk from 2000 years ago, in the diggings."
"Have you indeed? Is it intact?"
"Yes, Esteemed Instructor. I have taken the liberty of scanning the disk at the molecular level, and I have had my AI extract the information based on the historical archives of known data formats."
"And what have you found?"
"This! [dafk.net]"
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Well played, my friend. Well played.
formats (Score:2)
just think about encoding nightmares! reading the data problem is not too hard to solve even if we claw back from the stone age; the real problem is how to decode the data and then how to process it.
I can imagine them getting stumped on the DOC files they are trying open; the jpegs have to be even more difficult.
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With the seemingly downward trend in optical drive quality over the past twelve years, I doubt that a drive made today could read such a disc in 3 years time, much less 2000.
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Modern archaeologists have been able to read etched stone records from 5000 years ago [wikipedia.org]. And most of the deciphering was done in the 19th century - ie. without the help of computers.
I think 2000 years from now they can handle whatever system we can dream up.
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You save the instructions on how to build and operate a reader... onto a stone disc. That way archaeologists in the future will be able to know how to build new readers. =)
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WOW! This is a mixed salad of mental illness
Let's see, we start it all off with a really witless attempt at a racial slur. Honestly, this is a living example of why we so need Head-Start. Then he goes for the ham-fisted attempt at sarcasm, and finally brings the whole trailer trash Trifecta home with an awkward insinuation regarding a political system that only exists any more on a backward Caribbean Island. My hats off sir, in two sentences you've regurgitated enough stupidity to lower the average IQ of th
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Apparently you're also part troll.
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Actually in your case I'd take a wild shot and go with Homo Erectus... ;-)
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I'm guessing though, from the shallow end of the gene pool. Chlorine anybody???
I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
Stonehenge is a data center! I wonder if they're hiring?
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It's durable... (Score:5, Funny)
*chinkchink. pause. chink. pause. chinkchink. *
Re:It's durable... (Score:5, Funny)
Just like Creative (Score:2)
I miss my old Creative CD Burner! Fast as hell, but sounded like a defective jet engine. And most everyone that I knew about died shortly after its warranty expired.
Just be careful... (Score:2)
...not to drop it.
Re:Just be careful... (Score:5, Funny)
**IA (Score:2)
The "die" layer must be why (Score:5, Funny)
... the CD/DVD/BD discs don't last. If only they'd used a dye layer instead.
Or you could just post your data on the web (Score:2)
and wait for it to be archived.
Liquid Nitrogen (Score:4, Interesting)
You can put a normal CD-R disk in Liquid Nitrogen without any damage. I have tested it myself. Although it warps into a dome shape until it warms.
So kind of like factory-made CDs/DVDs? (Score:2)
This doesn't sound a whole lot different than CDs or DVDs burned in factories. Those don't use a dye layer either, but pits etched into an (aluminum?) substrate. It sounds like this company has found a way to produce similar results at home -- but that doesn't mean the resulting discs will be any more durable or have longer life than your store-bought CDs/DVDs.
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This doesn't sound a whole lot different than CDs or DVDs burned in factories. Those don't use a dye layer either, but pits etched into an (aluminum?) substrate. It sounds like this company has found a way to produce similar results at home -- but that doesn't mean the resulting discs will be any more durable or have longer life than your store-bought CDs/DVDs.
1. MAFIAA has little incentive to sell you discs that will last forever - I'd say, on the contrary. The fact they sell you pressed CD/DVD-es is rather related to the cost of producing them than it is with their concern on how long they'll last for you.
2. However, as a Write-Once-a-single-copy (backup, archiving purposes), I think this one will make a killing. The current life-span of recordable CD/DVD (not the pressed ones) vary between 10-300 years (subject to the quality and storage/use patterns).
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They've tested the new media for exposure to light, temperature, and humidity, and they claim it suffered no degradation (while all others did). That's significant, but if you scratch it, it's still destroyed. In that sense, it still seems more fragile than high-quality magnetic tape -- but I suppose if the goal is long-term storage, they could put an actual anti-scratch coating on the media and charge you more for it.
I think your estimates of the life of burned CDs and DVDs are way overblown, BTW. Ten year
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I think your estimates of the life of burned CDs and DVDs are way overblown, BTW.
Not mine, so I can't comment. What I can do is to provide some sources for the estimates:
300 years citation [wikipedia.org] - "MAM-A (Mitsui) claims a life of 300 years on their archival gold CD-R and 100 years for gold DVDs."
10 year estimate [wikipedia.org] - "According to research conducted by J. Perdereau, CD-Rs are expected to have an average life expectancy of 10 years."
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OK, well those MAM-A figures are a special case. When they talk about "archival gold CD-Rs," they really mean gold... they use a 24 karat gold substrate and patented dyes to achieve higher durability than other media on the market. But of course, it's never been proven, because no single piece of this media has been around for 300 years. Most of their claims seem to be based on the improved lightfastness of their patented dye, but there are various factors that affect media durability (temperature, humidity
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But of course, it's never been proven, because no single piece of this media has been around for 300 years.
:) Well, with the current crisis, what can we do better than to wait and see :)
Archiving data long term (Score:3)
My wife's Thesis was on this subject. Readers won't last long enough to make this useful.
http://explorer.cyberstreet.com/CET4970H-Peterson-Thesis.pdf [cyberstreet.com]
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Has any alien decrypted the message yet?
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Microscopes are pretty easy to make.
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Patents for the "rock-like" material (Score:2)
The material is probably mentioned in one of these Patents [uspto.gov]
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The patent says silicon and/or aluminum. Doesn't sound very stone like to me.
What? Stone is mostly silicon dioxide, how does something made out of silicon not sound stone like?
Stone-like? I know, I know! (Score:2)
It's Play-Doh.
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(Oven-fired, that is.)
Weren't etched substratae used before? (Score:2)
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CDs, DVDs, and Laser Discs are created the same way. They are aluminum discs sandwiched between two layers of plastic, with the pits etched in with a laser (the lands are the unmodified parts of the disc).
Manufactured optical discs do NOT have the aluminum layer etched using a laser, instead they are "pressed" and a die is used to press pits into a mostly aluminum layer which is done all at once (like how a stamp works). Write-able optical discs instead have a reflective layer with a layer of dye in front
Like all relics it will be deemed (Score:2)
"What were all the microscopic pits for?"
"To catch their souls of course!!!"
Stoneware (Score:3)
Also can be tied to a stick and used to smack down post-apocalyptic miscreants after its original purpose is long forgotten.
sure... (Score:2)
This is how they touted CDs in the earl 1990s. Tapes from the early 1980s are still playable (despite physical abuse), and can be repaired easily if they are not. It's a rare CD which lasts 10 years under non-archive conditions.
By the time this technology is proved useless, they will have made their money and retired!
(or perhaps this is a good thing and I'm being too cynical -- but they'd better have a self-powered player unit that will live as long as the media -- or human-readable plans to build one)
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I have worked with these discs and one of their drives and was very skeptical at first but after learning more about it I realized it is really pretty ground breaking and useful for archiving data. I of course joked around with the same joke you said regarding the actual life of the discs but compared to current writable optical media M-Discs are definitely a huge step up.
You see a regular writable discs main long term storage problem is the dye used to store the data degrades MUCH quicker than any other p
I swear I've seen this before—Cranberry Diam (Score:2)
These "diamond-hard stone" discs can withstand "temperatures extending up to 176 degrees Fahrenheit as well as UV rays that would destroy conventional DVD discs."
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/14/cranberry-diamondisc-the-35-dvd-thatll-last-longer-than-your/ [engadget.com]
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The discs you mentioned are from the same source, Cranberry was just a company (that does not seem to exist any longer) that handled the marketing of the MDiscs. The technology has been around a while, I used one of the drives and played around with the media a few years ago at my former employers office and at that time I think the discs went by the names Cranberry DiamondDisc as well as the manufacturers name M-ARC disc.
single sided? (Score:2)
"no reflective or die layer"
Does this mean that I can't record on both sides any more?
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put it to the mythbusters test (Score:3)
put it to the mythbusters test
Sounds like it came from the future (Score:2)
New name: Titan discs (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2)
Because boiling water and liquid nitrogen is what I regularly expose my discs to. Not.
How 'bout testing it against my kids, that drop them on the wood floor, and then swirl them around doing their own etching.
And we all know what it's made of. (Score:2)
It's made of diamondium! - Professor Farnsworth
Price down to $8 per blank disk (Score:2)
The problem with archival-quality DVD blanks is that they cost too much. These cost about $8 each from Amazon.
It's not clear what the writing rate is. Etching pits is usually slower than turning a dye a different color. Despite this, it's a useful technology to have around.
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I remember paying $10 apiece for CD blanks, and not archival ones.
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I wonder if it's possible they could be made of some variant of Mica. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mica [wikipedia.org]
Interesting, live in one of those countries that export it the most and had no idea of the stuff :) Personally I was thinking of a thin layer of artificial diamonds/graphite, just don't know how you'd imprint anything on them without upgrading the laser to a handcannon.
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Mica is a very soft mineral and not very suitable for this sort of application.
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Mica is a very soft mineral and not very suitable for this sort of application.
They didn't say the whole disc is made out of (whatever it is). They say it's made up of "multiple layers of material."
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Go over your Moh's hardness scale again - Mica is TOO SOFT to be usable as ANY layer. It's very brittle as well and not quite transparent.
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Go over your Moh's hardness scale again - Mica is TOO SOFT to be usable as ANY layer. It's very brittle as well and not quite transparent.
Really? So it's too soft to be sandwiched between two pieces of hard, transparent plastic?
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I'm guessing sapphire, what the little stones in sand paper, and high end watch crystals are made of. There is already patents for data storage on it, and it is incredibly heat resistant. I don't know about die free writing.
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"I have a 'stone-like' 'natural' substance in my pants."
Sand?
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I have a 'stone-like' 'natural' substance in my pants.
Coprolites?