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SanDisk WORM SD Card Can Store Data For 100 Years
CWmike writes "SanDisk has announced a 1GB Secure Digital card that can store data for 100 years, but can be written on only once. The WORM (write once, read many) card is 'tamper-proof' and data cannot be altered or deleted, SanDisk said in a statement. The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said. SanDisk determined the media's 100-year data-retention lifespan based on internal tests conducted at normal room temperatures. The company said it is shipping the media in volume to the Japanese police force to archive images as an alternative to film. The company is working with a number of consumer electronics companies, including camera vendors, to support the media."
For non-repudiation purposes, digital data can have a cryptographic hash computed on it. It can also be signed with a timestamp by a trusted third-party. If you're concerned about data being tampered with after it is on the card, the police can simply publish a cryptographic hash of every card they archive after they have written to it. In fact they can do that regardless of how they store the data.
To me this is kind of a technology regression, unless one is only concerned with archiving. I used to work at a Title Company where scanned documents were stored on a WORM drive in the mid-90's. WORM as a technology in itself tends to err on the side of retention time vs. speed. Think about it, CD-R, DVD-R and every other -R is technically WORM media.
I'm more worried about the fact that much electronics may suffer from natural changes in soldering. Especially lead-free solder is suffering from this since tin (used for soldering) changes characteristic when it's stored too cold.
The chip may be good for 100 years but the carrier for the chip may not.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
with a useless bit of trivia
Kodak- 100+ years
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq1632.shtml
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
And on top of all that, who knows where SanDisk will be in 100 years. Possibly bankrupt from having to refund everyone's WORM SD card.
No it's not. This is a high priced flash-based SD card with only 1GB of storage that requires you to write to each card. It's too small for video, too expensive for consumers, and not useful for media mass production.
Besides, if the content mass production industry wanted to use a transistor-based solution they'd just mass produce a much cheaper ROM cartridge. But they won't, since DVDs and Blu-Ray disks can be pressed for pennies.
"Quantum entanglement is a reasonably well-understood phenomenon which isn't a method of communication."
Except you're wrong and we've been trying to build single-bit quantum radios for quite some time, now.
And guess what Quantum Computing will involve? Communication. That data isn't just going to magically appear.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
. . . we called them PROMs. If you have an original IBM PC, its BIOS was in PROM. I bet most PROMs still are readable.
Glass would deform in that time scale...
I'm guessing your talking about the urban myth that glass can flow and melt? Sorry, but glass doesn't melt, it would hold it's form as long as it isn't shattered.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
TFA article is wrong. If you look at sandisk's actual press release they say the 100 life span is "based on reliability data from internal, accelerated lifespan testing for cards stored at normal room temperature, with humidity and static protection".
[FUCK BETA 2.6.2014]
True, but modern (E)EPROM programmers / readers will still read EPROM chips dating to at least the late 70's.
A SD card has a lot more in common with a ROM chip than it does with a 30 year old spinning disk, the way I see it. You call pull data off it using SPI interface, which pretty well every microcontroller made in the last decade has in hardware, and if not, you can bit-bang it half-drunk and blindfolded. All the information is available, I just can't see it being lost to the sands of time if you can bang up a reader for peanuts.
Guys have hooked these up to (home) routers, bitbanging the data off GPIOs that were originally relegated to flickering LEDs, and are able to use them as storage. (under linux)
Here is a pdf on the interface.
http://www.sdcard.org/developers/tech/sdcard/pls/Simplified_Physical_Layer_Spec.pdf
Section 7 is what I'm on about. The speed is reduced in the simple SPI mode, but if the data is important, I suppose that is irrelevant.
Sent from my PDP-11