Panasonic says that its 100GB Blu-ray discs will last a century

Panasonic says that its new 4-layer 100GB Blu-ray discs are so durable that you'll be able to retrieve the data in 100 years' time (which reminds us a lot of the claims they originally made about CDs, as one may recall). The company has been at work for the last few years making use of "tellurium suboxide palladium-doped phase-change recording films" (or Te-O-Pd, for those in the know) to improve the capacity of its Blu-ray discs. But the company has now achieved what appears to be the optimal ratio for durability and size: a 100GB disc that will last you a century. Of course, a few months ago Panasonic scientists completed a research paper showing a disc-making technique that kicked that timeframe up to 500 years, but could only hold 50GB of data. So that may indicate that if you have 1GB that you really need to be preserved for the next several thousand years, you may want to get some serious cash together and give Panasonic a ring. Of course, all of these developments assume that firstly in 100 years Blu-ray readers will have won the format war, and secondly, will still be around.

Read - TechOn
Read - Proceedings of SPIE

[Gadget Extremist @ Oct 19th 2006 5:55AM]

Considering the cost of palladium, these discs may cost a lot more than the already expensive blue-ray discs.

[Eddie @ Oct 19th 2006 6:07AM]

Yeah, but it's totally worth it. Oh wait.

[LongStar @ Oct 19th 2006 6:22AM]

nah im happy with my HD-DVD Player and HD-DVD Recorder. cheap , durable and haves the size that i need.

[Me? A luddite? @ Oct 19th 2006 6:22AM]

I've learnt the expensive way that nothing technology-wise is future proof. And besides how many people can still read a 5 1/4 inch floppy? Or even Zip discs?

[Doc. @ Oct 19th 2006 6:41AM]

Aw man, I get palladium-doped up every night. Best high out there. Shit yeah!

Doc.

[Dave @ Oct 19th 2006 7:16AM]

The more the better :)

[shadekh @ Oct 19th 2006 7:20AM]

How many of us here have lost data over the years due to Cd rot? The "durability" of even hq cd's from reputed manufacturers isnt much. For those who like archieving their stuff, its a bit of good news.

[Croz @ Oct 19th 2006 7:27AM]

The discs may be playable, but there's no saying that equipment capable of playing them will be around in 20 years, never mind 100. Besides in 100 years time why would you want to play your Laserdisc, VHS, Betamax, DVD, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD copies of the Star Wars Trilogy when you could probably see them on CD (that'll be Cultured Diamond rather than Compact Disc).

[Dhakhar @ Oct 19th 2006 2:50PM]

WTF who cares that it lasts 100 years, ill be dead! wouldnt you sooner have a terabyte disk that lasts 10 years?

[Wonderboy @ Oct 19th 2006 9:49AM]

I like Croz's "cd" idea... that way when you want to by your wife/girlfriend something nice, just swing by Best Buy, pick up a copy of the Matrix, stop at the jewelers and have them set in in a necklace, and you're both happy.

[Nick @ Oct 19th 2006 9:54AM]

Grammar fix: you don't need the apostrophe after "years"

[GioNYC @ Oct 19th 2006 10:20AM]

100gig on a Disc. ohhhhh, That could be my entire SOPRANOS set
(all seasons)!!!

[az @ Oct 19th 2006 10:47AM]

@Nick:

The apostrophe is correct, actually. A discussion can be foud on englishforums, here is the reasoning:

So you would say "three cups of sugar" instead of "three cups' sugar" (without "of" because this of would already be included in the s-Genitive) and
"Jim's dog" rather than "The dog of Jim".

"Two years' time" seems to be a poetical or fixed expression, therefore the s-genitive is more common to use than the of-phrase, but the of-phrase can be used in the same way though: "two years of time".

-AZ

[Banners @ Oct 19th 2006 11:20AM]

"A discussion can be foud on englishforums"

I think if you dig deep enough as well on englishforums, you might find out about the waning usage of the silent N.

;)

[TheWakeUpCall @ Oct 19th 2006 2:30PM]

In 100 years time 100 GB will be like 1MB is to us. So this information is completely stupid.

[EatingPie @ Oct 19th 2006 11:36AM]

Everyone commenting missed the important thing: That these discs are a great backup choice (assuming their claims are true).

Someone pointed out CD/DVD rot, but doesn't make the leap to "oh, they're ADDRESSING this issue with their 100 year statement.

Someone posted that there won't be equiptment to play these after 100 years, but fails to make the leap to "but this storage medium will last as long as I need it (5-15 years, no problem)."

And then there's the HD-DVD flame. Uh, this isn't to compete with HD-DVD, it's using Blu-Ray as it's other designed-in purpose: data back up.

-Pie

[dan @ Oct 19th 2006 11:53AM]

I can guarantee you if any of my Movie DVD suffer from rotting away like I have seen some CD's. I will sue the f out of the studios.

How could this suit be unavoided, if they would of let me RIP my DVD's without worrying about being caught.

touchee
(how ever you spell this stupid french word)

[dheera @ Oct 19th 2006 11:56AM]

I think this is an extremely important issue, in fact. For eons human civilization has used forms of media that last thousands of years. Whether things are written in stone, paper and preserved, or etched on metal, the information lasts for hundreds of years to come for historians to read and learn about their past. This has been an enormous help to society by providing a link and snapshot between the past and future. Humans today of enough scholarly knowledge can read nearly all forms of media from 1000 years ago. That is impressive.

Sadly, that isn't the case with media today. People are stopping to use those kinds of well-preserved media (heck, nobody carves in stone anymore and people are stopping to use paper) and starting to use more volatile, fragile storage media. This doesn't mean that data will get wiped for future generations, as we have backups, but what it does mean is that such a solid snapshot from points in time will no longer exist. Historians of the future will have nothing to dig up from the present time, and if they do dig up a CD-ROM out of the earth, chances are it'll be morphed and unreadable.

Thus, I think a disc lasting 500 years is a very good thing to have. People of the future will unearth digital imagery that people have backed up on Blu-Ray discs, should a natural disaster wipe a city, and know precisely what civilization looked like 500 years before their time. This, I think, is very important.

Furthermore, if possible, there should be some sort of backwards-compatible standard invented that will keep old media going for the future. There should always be a historian's optical drive that should *never* stop supporting CD-ROM discs, for instance, just so that unearthed CD discs will always be readable if one just so happens to have lasted 1000 years from nom, miraculously. Really now, a does a scanner reject a piece of egyptian papyrus because it's too old a standard? Do you think an optical drive should, for a historian?

-dheera

[tschareck @ Oct 19th 2006 12:59PM]

To what dheera said:

Oh, we still can preserve all of the data, information and media, that is worth preserving, for centuries, because we can have a lot of copies. Like with old films or music, that are remastered and put into more modern "packaging" like DVDs for exmple. And books can be reprinted again and again.
And if something is just a crap, why would anybody bother to read it after 500 years?

best wishes
OLO

[Cade @ Oct 19th 2006 12:57PM]

No one is going to be able to use blu-ray in 100 years. If it even takes off, it will be replaced several times over by then.

[dj mcmanus @ Oct 19th 2006 1:10PM]

Yeah, and CDS are indestructable.

Some of my discs from 5 or 6 years ago are discolouring and this shits gonna last 100 years?

Backup data in multiple formats to multiple locations.

DANCE LIKE A MACHINE!

[dheera @ Oct 19th 2006 1:12PM]

there may be a point at which it is, for a long long time, no longer necessary to look at consumers needing to have more data on a disc. consider an A4-sized slab of stone. you could store maybe a few hundred words on it. This was stone-age technology. People tried so hard forever to keep making better and more precise tools. Then came paper, and for the same volume you could store an entire book.

That said book technology needed no modifications till the 1900's. It suited civilization perfectly for hundreds of years. The advent of the computer is what neccessitated better storage media. The nice thing about books is that the readers to extract information from them (human eyes) are still capable of doing so.

I would find it sad to think that say if all of the Vesuvius area and the 500 kilopeople around it were wiped out soon enough because they are too stupid to move for the money the government would give them to leave the danger zone, that one wouldn't be able to, 500 years from now, be able to unearth all their blu-ray discs, cd-roms, and dvd-roms, dig up all their digital pictures, and see what life looked like in 2006.

-dheera

[say @ Feb 12th 2007 7:33PM]

WOW!!!! very interesting post you have some good points

[Josh @ Oct 19th 2006 4:34PM]

I have a four year old step-daughter. Her DVDs have a shelf life of at best a month (side note, this is exactly why it should be legal to back-up DVDs) and DVDs record at a much greater depth than blu-ray (though in both cases we are talking absurdly small). I can't imagine this blu-ray disc actually lasting any longer under the rigors of actual conditions than a DVD. Sure, for data storage in a clean room, where someone backs up 100 gigs and then never touches the disc again, it can probably easily achieve that.

It just bugs me that no one developing these formats ever considers the actual impact of a household with children. I hear that there do indeed exist households that both like to watch movies and have kids. Why doesn't a manufacturer start trying to tackle that problem, rather than worry about if a 100 GB medium is going to last a century (yeah, because it is a huge issue right now that floppy disks don't last that long. the likelyhood of a 100 GB disc still being relevant in a century is, shall we say, slim)?

[Chris @ Oct 20th 2006 12:24AM]

erm: where to buy, what can play/burn it?

gosh, I'm still waiting for a decent offline backup (other than tapes)....

[Oddmanout @ Oct 20th 2006 8:49AM]

"And besides how many people can still read a 5 1/4 inch floppy?"

Haha! Too true. A couple years ago even my pops got paid about $200 by some lawyer to retrieve data off of two 5 1/4 inch floppies as evidense for some case he was working on. The grin on dads face was just hilarious as he earned those two bennies in about 5 minutes...

Quothe pops "And people laugh at my continuing to put a 5.25" drive in my personal systems. WHO'S LAUGHIN' NOW ?!?!?!?! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!"

What can I say...he worked for the Postal service for 30 years...