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Start-Up Claims Immortality For Data With 'Stone-Like' Disc

Posted by timothy on from the load-up-the-station-wagon-with-these dept.

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."

3 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Immortal Reader As Well by Normal+Dan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd like to see this along with a disc reader that will withstand the test of time. What good is a disc if it can't be read with future technology? Imagine an archaeologist finding this disc 2000 years from now, with no way to read it. Now imagine if there was a device that withstood the test of time and could play back the information on the disc in some form. The people of the future would just need to wipe the screen down and press play.

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    1. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It wouldn't be cheap; but so long as the standard survived, or was infer-able, an optical disk reader in working condition would be merely a convenience:

      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.

    2. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given modern CnC/laser engraving tech, I'm assuming that 'rosetta stoning' some technical standards onto suitably chosen rocks would be as cheap, or cheaper, then ever. A competent hacker could probably knock out a 'pseudo-printer' driver that takes arbitrary print jobs and churns out control signals for an engraving system fairly quickly, at which point you'd just need a bunch of stone tablets chosen for geologic durability.

      Whether anybody would bother is much less clear.