11 ms·
Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc format
- nemasu 13y agoSounds interesting. Hopefully they will release more technical information about what makes it "archival" quality. Seems like a normal Blu-ray at first glance.
- robmcm 13y agoSounds like they have a disk with a large storage capacity and perhaps a slower read time and the marketing just did it's self. I would have imagined some special material that can last longer and is at lower risk from scratches...
- fur0n 13y agolike it says, higher capacity (300GB, 500GB, and 1TB) along with higher redundancy.
- deletes 13y agoBut they don't say how well it does, compared to the problem of cd/dvd, that fail to work after 10 years for no apparent reason( no visible physical damage ).
- gggggggg 13y agoFrom the 2013 release: "they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations". No mention in the new release how long they are meant to last though. This seems like a pretty key point to me.
- ekianjo 13y agoEven if they are not meant to last, say, more than 10 years, you could back them up with fresh disks in 8-9 years timeframe and be good to go for another decade, What's important after is that the disk can still be read by newer drives later on.
- roeme 13y agoVery interesting, though I'm really missing information on what kind of material they are using. While it's true that CD's can take a bit of the kind of environmental abuse they describe (you scratching your game's CD doesn't fall into this category), we all know that in reality they weren't that durable – though I suppose that stemmed more from the fact that most CD's were produced cheaply, corners cut, a lot of abuse by the end user and whatnot. Did you know that there's even a fungus that really likes to eat CD's? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotrichum_candidum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotrichum_candidum – Not so much for damp archive cellars, then! ). In conclusion; I think that just enforcing high manufacturing standards won't suffice, there must be some material definition as well. Looking forward for more information on this.
- nodata 13y agoWasn't the problem with CDs that they had a plastic layer, and a scratchable metal data layer with no protection on top?
- ars 13y agoYah, everyone assumed that the clear side was the fragile side and protected it, but actually the label side is much more fragile - and unlike the clear side, unfixable if it gets damaged. But what happened to the promised sapphire (alumina) coating on disks that makes them scratch proof?
- roeme 13y agoNot exactly; the specification called for a plastic layer on both sides of the metal data layer. In cheaply produced media however the top layer (top here = the one with the print on it) was made as thin as possible, or even omitted and just coated with a printing. Also, there were cases where the two layers were joined/glued together inadequately, not properly sealing the metal layer from the environment. All of this led to the oxidation of the metal layer; rendering it unusable.
- hga 13y agoStamped CDs have nothing but some thin protective layers on top of the metal. CD-Rs, at least good ones, have more protection on top and aren't as fragile.
- hrktb 13y ago>development of a standard for professional-use next-generation optical discs -- > dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored. So it's a new standard with tougher physical requirements. Actually in a japanese press release [1] they present at the end the current archival solution offered by Sony, which consist of a set of 12 optical discs in a cartridge. I'd image this new disc standard could be sealed as well for better protection. [1] http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/201307/13-0729/ http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/News/Press/201307/13-0729/
- jackgavigan 13y agoI expect this will be the same form-factor as existing 5.25" magneto-optical and Ultra Density Optical disks, which have been around for quite a while. Back in 1998, I dealt with HP jukeboxes the size of a wardrobe with robotic arms to pluck 9.1GB magneto-optical disks out of the racks and stick them into drives. IIRC, HP guaranteed their disks for 100 years.
- ChuckFrank 13y agoI get a kick out of the idea that someone would guarantee something beyond their lifespan, and possibly that of the institution. 100 years is still a pretty long time, and lots of things can happen, so I'm not sure who would be there at the 80 year mark if something were to go wrong with the disks.
- iopq 13y ago"Recall this batch immediately! These disks have a defect that will make them last 80, 90 years tops!"
- mikeash 13y agoEven if someone is around, what exactly are they going to do about it? It's not like they can wave a magic wand and get your data back.
- unethical_ban 13y agoI guarantee my stone tablets will last 100 years if they are cared for as specified in the user manual. Am I crazy?
- rlpb 13y ago1TB doesn't take so long to upload nowadays. Isn't this product going to have battle with a new era where we just upload to a storage provider, the provider aggregates customers' stored data on a massive scale and so the underlying storage technology no longer matters? I'm thinking about services like Amazon S3 and Glacier here, together with whatever competition appears. I presume that at this level, what matters is exabyte level storage hardware (perhaps a robot-managed room of archival discs or tapes). One where the provider can switch technology every few years, and customers never have to notice. At capacities on the level of terabytes, we're getting to the point where upload bandwidth isn't so much of a bottleneck any more, aren't we?
- Spittie 13y agoWhat? I don't know where you live, but I assure you that there are plenty of places where uploading a TB takes a lot of times (for example, it would take about 3 months with my home connection). Even using the average global upload speed (7.6Mbps[1]) it would take 12 days. So no, I don't think this is going to battle storage providers. [1] http://www.netindex.com/ http://www.netindex.com/
- rlpb 13y agoI claim that people who have the speed of your home connection is not the target market. You may want one of these, but this kind of demand will not be enough to support the existence of this product. Businesses have a choice: they can invest in buying storage hardware for a bunch of their computers every few years, or they can invest in a fast-enough Internet connection and outsource the storage. That Internet connection will bring them additional benefits over just storage. I claim that the economics are switching in favor of the Internet option, and will continue to do so over the next decade.
- onli 13y ago> I claim that people who have the speed of your home connection is not the target market. You know that you are talking about the typical speed of many industrialized countries, like Germany, Spain, France? I doubt those whole countries are not the target market.
- blue1 13y agoThis does not appear to be a consumer-oriented format like CDs and DVDs, but rather a niche product. Meaning that it will probably be not cheap. How is it supposed to be competitive with tape? 1TB is not that much.
- jackgavigan 13y agoTape is less reliable than optical disks.
- stonith 13y agoIt's also so slow to retrieve the content that as a DR strategy it's not very good, since you could be waiting months to recover all your data. I would imagine that a silo with multiple robots to place disks in many readers would be significantly better than tape in most ways, and would retain the low power advantage that tape enjoys over powered systems.
- welterde 13y agoThe time to read the complete tape might be longer than the time to read a blu-ray, but in terms of data rates modern tapes are still about a factor of 3 ahead of optical disks (160MB/s for Ultrium 6 vs 54MB/s for Blu-ray 12x).
- kalleboo 13y agoI wonder what happened to the idea of multiple optical read heads. When CD-ROM drives were trying to maintain 52x read rates, I think Pioneer or someone made a drive that read at twice the rate using 2 separate optical assemblies.
- sp332 13y agoKenwood had a 72x drive that used 7 lasers! http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2 http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=339&page=2
- jmnicolas 13y agoI, for one, am glad that disc is not dead.
- mrmondo 13y agoI'm almost certain that 1TB isn't large enough for 2014, let alone the next 3-5 years.
- aunty_helen 13y agoI'm sure they would sell you more than one ;)
- bebopsbraunbaer 13y agois there any information about the lifespan the disc? how long cant he data be read before the discs start to lose data because of age? 5 years?
- Pitarou 13y agoThis makes perfect sense. Sony and Panasonic need to do something with their lead in optical disk technology, but there's no demand for a Blu-ray successor. Heck, there isn't even much demand for Blu-ray. So archiving is the way to go. I just hope they make those things to last.
- derekp7 13y agoOnly one problem -- archiving is mostly a big business use case. Therefore, the technology will only have big business price tags. Remember when you could back up a home hard drive onto a single tape, and the media cost was only a fraction of your hard drive cost? And the tape drive was no more expensive than the hard drive? (i.e., those mini QIC cartridges).
- mseebach 13y ago> Only one problem -- archiving is mostly a big business use case. Not necessarily. With photography having been digital for about a decade and home video for about half that, tech savvy families easily have several TBs of data that they would want to hold on to for the long haul. The prospect of being able to burn a complete copy of these things on a few discs and leave them at the grandparents or in a bank box seems very appealing, and only more so over the coming years.
- rbanffy 13y agoIt's easier to imagine those families moving their data to ever larger magnetic disks than making something like this "consumer grade" (as in "consumer-proof").
- derekp7 13y agoMost people I know just copy everything to a large external USB drive (sometimes managed by backup software). So these things would have to be less than $50/TB for the media, and no more than a couple hundred for the drive, in order to compete with external USB spinning disks.
- egeozcan 13y agoI'd bet this will take years to produce in reasonable price levels and by then the capacity will have been made irrelevant by the market.
- Tepix 13y agoWhat about M-Disc? The DVD-writers that can write them are just as cheap as normal ones and I think $4 for a DVD-R is acceptable for long term storage. They announced that they would offer Blu-Ray media soon but I haven't seen them for sale.
- mashmac2 13y agohttp://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/ http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/ for those curious - it appears to be a stronger archival DVD/blu-ray that is already burn-able on certain drives that are on the market.
- cgore 13y agoHas anybody used these? A 1,000-year DVD/Blu-Ray sounds good. I would use it if it is actually reliable. (Actually just want decades, but centuries is better.)
- post_break 13y agoNon LTH BD-R has an estimated lifetime of 50 years if stored properly. 40 cents a disk. In a cd case, in your closet. M-Disk 1000 years, same storage idea. $5 a disc.
- lampe3 13y agoAnd why not save it on a External HDD ? I thought that CDs/DVDs are bad for backup because they crumble.
- sspiff 13y agoHard disks are also bad for backup because they rely on a magnetic charge being retained on the platters. Eventually, this charge becomes to weak to be read reliably, so it is unsuitable for long-term storage. Pressed disks (as in, those not burnt with a consumer drive) can last a lifetime if you take proper care of them, and are not as vulnerable to light, heat or humidity as the typical DVD-R.
- lampe3 13y agoThanks for the information. If i cant afford to press the disks how should i backup my data? Right now we are using nas systems with a raid setup
- hga 13y agoLTO tape or Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs are my recommendations and what I personally use at home. And I haven't checked for a few years to see if Taiyo Yuden is still producing good stuff, but if you're paying around 25 cents per disc it probably still is. MAM-A CD-R media is probably a good bet; I don't recommend DVD recordable media, even MAM-A Gold, because it pushed CD-R technology too far. Per sspiff, you do need to protect optical media from environmental extremes. Tape cartridges are more physically fragile (although I'm sure there's data recovery firms that'll repack the tape into a new cartridge) and also shouldn't get too hot or humid. And ideally are stacked on edge.
- sspiff 13y agoTo be honest, I haven't got a clue. Affordable, multi-decade storage is still an unsolved problem as far as I know. A RAID NAS is a good medium-term solution, and perhaps creating offline backups on disconnected drives every 5 years or so can solve long term storage, though it does require maintenance over time (refreshing the drives). If you are not afraid to use cloud storage, you might use those services, but I don't know how long those will be around.
- anon4 13y agoIf these still come as flimsy plastic fully exposed to the elements and can't be touched on the face, lest the data be destroyed, I'll be sorely disappointed. Seriously, why hasn't anyone made diskette-style discs a common standard? I have never seen a cd last more than a few years, or one single touch with a finger on the shiny side.
- vanderZwan 13y agoFor the same reason that the most common way of storing information before the CD was a disc where you scratched waveforms directly into the vinyl: a plastic disc with a thin film on top is super-simple and cheap to mass produce.
- anon4 13y agoYes, but it's bad for archiving data. My general experience with CDs and DVDs is that two out of every three you burn will be unreadable the moment you burn them and the third one will be readable exactly ten times before it stops being readable, too. That was alright when I just needed to move data around, or wanted to watch a movie once or twice, but I can't use something that unreliable for archiving.
- kalleboo 13y ago> My general experience with CDs and DVDs is that two out of every three you burn will be unreadable the moment you burn them Just a few weeks ago I actually took my old spindles of CD-Rs and DVD-Rs out of storage and moved into Amazon Glacier. The disks had dates from 1999-2007. My results were that out of 80 or so discs, 5 of them had unrecoverable errors (thank god for dd_rescue). These were burned in my youth, so the method I picked disc brands was "the cheapest disks that aren't those uncoated foil noname ones"
- biot 13y agoIf you're seeing a 66% failure rate, may I suggest replacing your faulty burner or reader? I've yet to experience an instantly unreadable CD/DVD that I've burned, whether using the burned disc in the same drive or another system's drive.
- dsr_ 13y agoImportant information that will drastically affect actual usage not provided: - expected and guaranteed lifetime of discs - minimum undamaged read/write speeds - recoverable-error read speeds - bit error rate for writing and reading Let's take a typical small business system's requirements. We have a 2U database with 12 3.5" hot-swap disks, 2 200GB SSDs for caching and 10 3TB disks in a RAID10. We have up to 15TB that we want to archive. Optimism: we get 100MB/s write speed and a write BER of 10^-15. We swap 30 500GB disks, each taking about an hour and a half to write, and about one in a thousand disks has an unrecoverable error. More likely: we get 75MB/s sustained write speed and a write BER of 10^-14. We swap 30 500GB disks, each taking close to two hours, and we can expect one in three complete sets to have an unrecoverable error. Press releases: not quite useful.
- wazoox 13y agoIn the meanwhile, you could grab an existing LTO-6 drive, and archive everything on 6 uncompressed tapes in about 30 hours (much less if your data is prone to compression).
- hga 13y agoAfter building a very very fast staging disk system to feed it. That's one of many reasons I went with LTO-4 and a slower HP tape drive, I can feed it without shoe-shining from one 15K SAS disk that I have Bacula staging to ... and I don't care about how long it takes to do my backups or restores, which is generally not the case for businesses. Back when I made that choice, it was said no single magnetic disk could keep up with an LTO-5 tape drive.
- beagle3 13y agoOr 4x 4TB drives (at ~$180-$250 each from a quick newegg search), at ~15 hours if you can connect all of them at the same time, or ~60 hours if you need to do that serially (assuming 75MB/sec, which I often get - are you sure you're actually getting 150MB/sec on your LTO-6 tapes?) At about a quarter of the price of the LTO tape drive alone -- data can be recovered anywhere for the next 20 years or so (I have tapes from 2002 that I was unable to find a tape drive for in 2007, but I have a pair of 15GB IDE disks from 2000 that I checked last month and are still readable). At $60-$80/2.5TB, ($24/TB) LTO6 does have an advantage to disk ($40/TB) if you have hundreds of TBs to backup. However, because of the cost of the drive itself ($3000), you only break even after 200TB or so. And if your drive breaks (or you need to backup in one place and recover in another, as is often the case with DR plans), you break even only after 400TB or so. Since approximately 1998, hard drives for backup beat tapes on capacity, price, access speed (drives are random access!) accessibility (an external universal SATA/IDE can be bought for $30 or so, but you already have the connections on your motherboard so you don't even need it). I haven't been able to find anyone with a convincing argument for tapes - maybe you have one?
- slacka 13y agoThe Holographic Versatile Disc format has existed since 2004 and can store up to 6 TB vs Archival Disc format capacity of only 300 GB - 1 TB. Any idea what advantage ADs have over HVDs?
- taspeotis 13y agoI think the main advantage is that ADs are relatively less vaporware than HVDs [1]. > Standards for 100 GB read-only holographic discs and 200 GB recordable cartridges were published by ECMA in 2007, but no holographic disc product has appeared in the market. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
- kalleboo 13y agoDid they ever manage to make those? They were announced over and over again but I don't think any products ever hit the market. Vaporware.
- jrochkind1 13y agoIt seems this is mainly just a larger capacity (1TB) optical disc, and the 'archival' is just marketing? For that matter, if they were really marketing at those who are professionally concerned with long-term reliable storage (archivists), even the marketing would include some information on what makes this new media any more reliable over the long-term than existing optical media. The press release includes nothing on this, odd for something branded as 'archival'. It looks like it's just a larger capacity optical disc (which I'm sure there's a market for), with the 'archival' part just being marketting (odd; apparently they think there's a market for this too, even when it's just spin).
- keeperofdakeys 13y agoCD's don't last forever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Lifespan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R#Lifespan), so you can't use them for archival purposes. For now, there is no way to tell whether these will be any better.
- hga 13y agoI believe you can use them for archival purposes if you buy quality discs. Which for me means Made in Japan Taiyo Yuden, although perhaps Mitsui/MAM-A are good. See https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=7372810 https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=7372810 for my most recent experiences with these discs.
- acdha 13y agoThis is really, really, dangerous advice unless you're following proper archival practice and have made multiple copies which are regularly checked for bit errors. For all media, but particularly for CD-Rs, you have to be very careful about environmental conditions – a few degrees temperature difference makes a difference for how fast the dye degrades and unless you actually monitor this, it's easy to have that problem without noticing it until things start failing. For a small user, you have the extra concern of betting large on a single production run from a single vendor. If you care about archival, you'd really want to burn multiple copies using discs from different production runs and, preferably, different manufacturers. (This is, of course, why I'd really recommend using CD-Rs only in conjunction with a different technology such as AWS Glacier which has a completely different set of failure modes)
- al2o3cr 13y agoAh yes, this must be targeting the ever-popular "people who didn't pay attention to any of Sony's OTHER proprietary formats that have now been utterly abandoned" market.
- hga 13y agoI've not heard of Sony doing this in the "professional" market, e.g. while AIT/SAIT has been abandoned, Amazon indicates you can still buy tape cartridges. But, yeah, if you went with them right now you're wishing you went with LTO, or have already switched or started. On the other hand, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372595 indicates Panasonic is not trustworthy in this area. Maybe give this 5-10 years and see if has staying power, adoption by others, etc. The LTO ecosystem shows this sort of thing can be done.
- dannyvanhooy 13y agoMitsubishi ARLEDIA, long-term DVD-R optical media storage are using this longer. I think they started in 2008.
- dannyvanhooy 13y agoMitsubishi ARLEDIA, long-term DVD-R optical media storage has this a few years ago. I think they started in 2008. Archival Disc format is not a great news.
- roeme 13y agoHow are we today, little sockpuppet? (Can somebody with more karma please flay, er, flag'im?)
- pasbesoin 13y agoIs there a "plug and chug" way to do PAR (PAR2, etc.) segmentation and error correction if one is not using WinRAR?