5 ms·

How is this any better than just burning your data to a blu-ray, which lasts centuries when stored under proper conditions (theoretically, anyway) I need to giv

by tabeth 9y ago

How is this any better than just burning your data to a blu-ray, which lasts centuries when stored under proper conditions (theoretically, anyway) I need to give this a closer look.

davidbanham 9y ago
It's different (better?) in that it doesn't rely on you remembering to actually burn that data, then store it safely. It comes with an app you can run on your phone to upload all your photos immediately, for instance. It has importers to archive all your tweets automatically, for example. It allows you to outsource the task of "Keep this blu-ray safe" to a cloud provider (or a friend) while encrypting your data to keep it private.
ams6110 9y ago
Not having to worry if there will be any Blu-Ray readers available in a century.
- tantalor 9y ago
  Seriously. The only device I have which can read a CD-ROM is my car. The PS4 can read Blu-Ray and DVD but not CD-ROM.
  - freeflight 9y ago
    If you really need to read a CD-ROM then getting your hands on a SATA DVD-Drive, which usually are able to read CD-ROM, shouldn't be that big of a problem. Without looking hard I'd probably come up with 3 spare ones in my basement alone. Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      Then I’d need to find a computer with a SATA interface... looking 10 years in the future it’d be even less easy.
      - jwfxpr 9y ago
        I have friends who work in the IT section for an under-resourced cultural institute focused on the preservation and recording of disappearing cultures and ethnic groups, including the preservation of speech and utterances in languages that now have no living native speakers. They discovered recently, to their alarm, that the only surviving copies of some recordings were now on old 3½ and 5¼ inch floppies that had somehow been stored without accurate cataloguing. They are struggling to find equipment that can 1) read the discs, 2) interface with the disc drives, 3) tell them what is actually on each disc and what file formats are in use (they have good guesses, but no certainty) and 4) find software that will be compatible with those formats. They have neither the skills nor budget to do in-house nor outsourced forensics for this. At this point they don't even know what exactly might be lost to humanity's knowledge, and the descendents of these people, forever.
        figgis 9y ago
        Would something like https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/490099/Bytecc-Internal-Floppy-Drive-with-FlashCard/ https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/490099/Bytecc-Interna... work?
        voltagex_ 9y ago
        Yes, with a perfect floppy disk. There aren't any perfect floppy disks left. You need a kryoflux or similar.
        Tempest1981 9y ago
        Floppy + SD card reader -- looks handy. But still has an IDE connector. Recent motherboards only have SATA. The review here says you can't access the floppy via USB, fwiw: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820192022 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682019... Maybe something like this: (USB floppy) https://www.amazon.com/External-Floppy-Portable-Windows-Required/dp/B00RXEWOAA https://www.amazon.com/External-Floppy-Portable-Windows-Requ...
        voltagex_ 9y ago
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      > Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't. You'd be surprised. I went recently through several of mine and lo and behold they could all be read. I guess it depends a lot on your storage conditions.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    I would actually be far more comfortable with storing my data for archival on CD-ROM or DVDs than BluRay, since the former standards have been publicly and freely documented[1][2] from the physical properties up to the logical bits and bytes, while I don't believe the same exists for the latter. In other words, anyone can, with enough engineering resources, create a drive capable of reading those discs, which is more than can be said of more proprietary formats. [1]http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-394.htm http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm... [2]https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-359.htm https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ec...
- carterehsmith 9y ago
  >> Not having to worry if there will be any Blu-Ray readers available in a century. Century? Startup sites like the one above last on average 6 months, that is, until they find out that their $6/mo DigitalOcean droplet suddenly costs... $10/mo! Or $100/mo or whatever and then they find out they cannot fund their $100/mo droplet and call it quits. So... if you need the data to be around for 100 years, maybe not give it to the random startup.
  - SarasaNews 9y ago
    This project started development 8 years ago. https://github.com/camlistore/camlistore https://github.com/camlistore/camlistore
  - detaro 9y ago
    It's an open-source project that has been around for nearly a decade, not some new startup.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  In a century I don’t even think we’d have CD/Blue-Ray. By then most of us would be dead already, so why worry?
  - eggsome 9y ago
    I’m sure a graph of Time vs Value for data would have a significant dip shortly after creation, but on the scale of centuries it only goes up. (just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls).
milcron 9y ago
M-DISC is even better. Burnable discs use an organic dye which oxidizes over time. M-DISC uses a "glassy carbon" layer that is inert to oxidation. They adhere to DVD-R, BD-R, and BD-XL standards so it's readable in standard disc drives. You need a special drive to burn them, however (requires a high-power laser).
- Veratyr 9y ago
  > Burnable discs use an organic dye which oxidizes over time. This is only true of DVDs and a rare variant of Blu-Ray called LTH. Even cheap shitty Blu-Rays from Chinese manufacturers use inorganic dyes these days. Also, the French Archives did a test of a variety of DVDs for longevity in adverse conditions and found that M-DISC didn't last significantly longer than competitors, even those with inorganic dyes: https://documents.lne.fr/publications/guides-documents-techniques/syylex-glass-dvd-accelerated-aging-report.pdf https://documents.lne.fr/publications/guides-documents-techn... The US DoD also did a similar test under different conditions and found it performed much better than the competition though: http://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf http://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf I suspect the difference between the French and US tests might be the French using a longer test duration and the Americans using light. The French went up to 1000h while the Americans only went to 24 as far as I can tell. And unlike DVDs, I haven't seen any studies of longevity for M-DISC Blu-Rays.
gf263 9y ago
This is such a classic hacker news comment
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mixedCase 9y ago
  Always a good time for linking the Show HN for Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    The second comment is the important one, where they completely miss the point of ease of use. (The first comment is right, installing stuff on a corporate comptuer is tricky.) So let's look at ease of use! You need to have a server and separately manage GPG keys. Looks like an archival blu-ray wins on that front. (And yes I see where it's a goal to make this easy to use for everyone, it's not there yet.) So whether tabeth is wrong or right to think it's of limited use, they are not fundamentally missing the point.

by tabeth 9y ago

How is this any better than just burning your data to a blu-ray, which lasts centuries when stored under proper conditions (theoretically, anyway) I need to give this a closer look.

davidbanham 9y ago

It's different (better?) in that it doesn't rely on you remembering to actually burn that data, then store it safely. It comes with an app you can run on your phone to upload all your photos immediately, for instance. It has importers to archive all your tweets automatically, for example. It allows you to outsource the task of "Keep this blu-ray safe" to a cloud provider (or a friend) while encrypting your data to keep it private.

ams6110 9y ago

Not having to worry if there will be any Blu-Ray readers available in a century.

tantalor 9y ago
Seriously. The only device I have which can read a CD-ROM is my car. The PS4 can read Blu-Ray and DVD but not CD-ROM.
- freeflight 9y ago
  If you really need to read a CD-ROM then getting your hands on a SATA DVD-Drive, which usually are able to read CD-ROM, shouldn't be that big of a problem. Without looking hard I'd probably come up with 3 spare ones in my basement alone. Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    Then I’d need to find a computer with a SATA interface... looking 10 years in the future it’d be even less easy.
    - jwfxpr 9y ago
      I have friends who work in the IT section for an under-resourced cultural institute focused on the preservation and recording of disappearing cultures and ethnic groups, including the preservation of speech and utterances in languages that now have no living native speakers. They discovered recently, to their alarm, that the only surviving copies of some recordings were now on old 3½ and 5¼ inch floppies that had somehow been stored without accurate cataloguing. They are struggling to find equipment that can 1) read the discs, 2) interface with the disc drives, 3) tell them what is actually on each disc and what file formats are in use (they have good guesses, but no certainty) and 4) find software that will be compatible with those formats. They have neither the skills nor budget to do in-house nor outsourced forensics for this. At this point they don't even know what exactly might be lost to humanity's knowledge, and the descendents of these people, forever.
      - figgis 9y ago
        Would something like https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/490099/Bytecc-Internal-Floppy-Drive-with-FlashCard/ https://www.officedepot.com/a/products/490099/Bytecc-Interna... work?
        voltagex_ 9y ago
        Yes, with a perfect floppy disk. There aren't any perfect floppy disks left. You need a kryoflux or similar.
        Tempest1981 9y ago
        Floppy + SD card reader -- looks handy. But still has an IDE connector. Recent motherboards only have SATA. The review here says you can't access the floppy via USB, fwiw: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820192022 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1682019... Maybe something like this: (USB floppy) https://www.amazon.com/External-Floppy-Portable-Windows-Required/dp/B00RXEWOAA https://www.amazon.com/External-Floppy-Portable-Windows-Requ...
      - voltagex_ 9y ago
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > Tho I don't think that many of the self-burned CD's from 2 decades ago are still any good, I know mine usually ain't. You'd be surprised. I went recently through several of mine and lo and behold they could all be read. I guess it depends a lot on your storage conditions.
- userbinator 9y ago
  I would actually be far more comfortable with storing my data for archival on CD-ROM or DVDs than BluRay, since the former standards have been publicly and freely documented[1][2] from the physical properties up to the logical bits and bytes, while I don't believe the same exists for the latter. In other words, anyone can, with enough engineering resources, create a drive capable of reading those discs, which is more than can be said of more proprietary formats. [1]http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-394.htm http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecm... [2]https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-359.htm https://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ec...
carterehsmith 9y ago
>> Not having to worry if there will be any Blu-Ray readers available in a century. Century? Startup sites like the one above last on average 6 months, that is, until they find out that their $6/mo DigitalOcean droplet suddenly costs... $10/mo! Or $100/mo or whatever and then they find out they cannot fund their $100/mo droplet and call it quits. So... if you need the data to be around for 100 years, maybe not give it to the random startup.
- SarasaNews 9y ago
  This project started development 8 years ago. https://github.com/camlistore/camlistore https://github.com/camlistore/camlistore
- detaro 9y ago
  It's an open-source project that has been around for nearly a decade, not some new startup.
yeukhon 9y ago
In a century I don’t even think we’d have CD/Blue-Ray. By then most of us would be dead already, so why worry?
- eggsome 9y ago
  I’m sure a graph of Time vs Value for data would have a significant dip shortly after creation, but on the scale of centuries it only goes up. (just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls).

milcron 9y ago

M-DISC is even better. Burnable discs use an organic dye which oxidizes over time. M-DISC uses a "glassy carbon" layer that is inert to oxidation. They adhere to DVD-R, BD-R, and BD-XL standards so it's readable in standard disc drives. You need a special drive to burn them, however (requires a high-power laser).

Veratyr 9y ago
> Burnable discs use an organic dye which oxidizes over time. This is only true of DVDs and a rare variant of Blu-Ray called LTH. Even cheap shitty Blu-Rays from Chinese manufacturers use inorganic dyes these days. Also, the French Archives did a test of a variety of DVDs for longevity in adverse conditions and found that M-DISC didn't last significantly longer than competitors, even those with inorganic dyes: https://documents.lne.fr/publications/guides-documents-techniques/syylex-glass-dvd-accelerated-aging-report.pdf https://documents.lne.fr/publications/guides-documents-techn... The US DoD also did a similar test under different conditions and found it performed much better than the competition though: http://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf http://www.esystor.com/images/China_Lake_Full_Report.pdf I suspect the difference between the French and US tests might be the French using a longer test duration and the Americans using light. The French went up to 1000h while the Americans only went to 24 as far as I can tell. And unlike DVDs, I haven't seen any studies of longevity for M-DISC Blu-Rays.

gf263 9y ago

This is such a classic hacker news comment

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mixedCase 9y ago
Always a good time for linking the Show HN for Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  The second comment is the important one, where they completely miss the point of ease of use. (The first comment is right, installing stuff on a corporate comptuer is tricky.) So let's look at ease of use! You need to have a server and separately manage GPG keys. Looks like an archival blu-ray wins on that front. (And yes I see where it's a goal to make this easy to use for everyone, it's not there yet.) So whether tabeth is wrong or right to think it's of limited use, they are not fundamentally missing the point.