Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

38 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    The M-Disc can be dipped in liquid nitrogen and then boiling water without harming it.

    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.

    1. Re:What? by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    2. Re:What? by ThatsMyNick · · Score: 2

      Yeah, the right questions would be...
      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.

    3. Re:What? by Sene · · Score: 4, Informative

      I didn't see them calling the disc idiot-proof :)

    4. Re:What? by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 2

      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.

    5. Re:What? by countertrolling · · Score: 2

      See, it's called sarcasm.

      Well, speaking of which... I mean, I'm sure you're responding to something perfectly serious

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    6. Re:What? by countertrolling · · Score: 2

      How'd that happen?

      --
      For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
    7. Re:What? by Osgeld · · Score: 2

      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.

    8. Re:What? by ArundelCastle · · Score: 2

      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.
      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 /. in the past. I can't tell you what they are called, and you probably haven't heard of them either.

      Of course I might be working for the crystalline holographic storage lobby.

    9. Re:What? by badran · · Score: 2

      This is more like Child-proofing. You will be surprised what a 5 year old can do.

    10. Re:What? by greentshirt · · Score: 2
      Actually, I find the parent's list of questions highly relevant. The most common ways I've destroyed data-mediums are (1) dropping and shattering them (2) scratching them (3) leaving them in car/office/attic without realizing and (4) accidentally getting them wet. Wanting a potential backup medium to be withstand the most commons forms of accidental damage is not idiot-proofing.

      I really don't care if this product can withstand the heat of a thousand angry suns; however, if it proves more resilient in my real world usage, then there's a story here.

  2. Bedrock: by Hartree · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think this is how Fred Flintstone's instant camera worked.

    1. Re:Bedrock: by GrumpySteen · · 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?

    2. Re:Bedrock: by couchslug · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm still waiting for beaver shots of Betty.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
    3. Re:Bedrock: by Genda · · Score: 3, 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?"

  3. 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.

    --
    A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
    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 PRMan · · Score: 2, Funny

      Any DVD reader can read it. Compatibility with those should last beyond our lifetime.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    3. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by bpsbr_ernie · · Score: 2

      But... will there be DRM... and will it annoy them... and lead them to believe... "oh, its just a stupid Hollywood movie... not worth decoding..." ;-)

    4. 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.

    5. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by camperdave · · Score: 2, Funny

      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!"

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    6. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by Anonymous Coward · · 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".

    7. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by Lanteran · · Score: 3, 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...

      --
      "People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
    8. Re:Immortal Reader As Well by Dahamma · · Score: 2

      Modern archaeologists have been able to read etched stone records from 5000 years ago. 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.

  4. I knew it! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Stonehenge is a data center! I wonder if they're hiring?

    1. Re:I knew it! by TheQuantumShift · · Score: 2

      It all sounds great; that is until they take you downstairs and you have to watch the 2000 year long "Diversity, winning with combinations!" video from HR whilst strapped into the Pandorica...

      --

      Shift happens. Fire it up.
  5. It's durable... by jspayne · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...but the write times are a bitch.

    *chinkchink. pause. chink. pause. chinkchink. *

    1. Re:It's durable... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just whip the scribes harder. They were advertised as "52x" on the box, and by god they'll put out 52x or die trying!

  6. Re:This story certainly has immortality by Conditioner · · Score: 3, Funny

    This technology was invented by Shampoo ! http://idle.slashdot.org/story/08/11/07/0531227/Slashdots-Disagree-Mail

  7. The "die" layer must be why by rpresser · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the CD/DVD/BD discs don't last. If only they'd used a dye layer instead.

  8. Liquid Nitrogen by pcjunky · · Score: 3, 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.

  9. Archiving data long term by pcjunky · · Score: 2

    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

    1. Re:Archiving data long term by rossdee · · Score: 2

      Has any alien decrypted the message yet?

  10. Re:Just be careful... by MaxBooger · · Score: 4, Funny

    Moses, "The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen... ", *CRASH*, "Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!"

  11. Stoneware by pegasustonans · · Score: 2

    Also can be tied to a stick and used to smack down post-apocalyptic miscreants after its original purpose is long forgotten.

    --
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
  12. put it to the mythbusters test by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 2

    put it to the mythbusters test

  13. They requested modified testing to get the numbers by tlambert · · Score: 2

    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 saying it's not useful; it probably will be a big hit with the LDS Church, the military, and the IRS, but they had to start with good writes and then work at extreme boundary conditions on the testing to successfully destroy the other discs.

    -- Terry

  14. Re:Weren't etched substratae used before? by Danga · · Score: 2

    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 of it and the laser punches holes in the dye which is really just a phase change allowing the areas hit by the laser to let the reading laser through so it can be reflected back to the reading sensor. Re-writable discs have further functionality allowing to phase change between "pit" and "land".

    --
    Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.