[Cialug] long term storage

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Afan Pasalic <afan at afan.net> wrote:

> Since technology is changing, store your data on DVDs - good for 5
> years. And in 5 years there will be new type of media (bigger, better,
> safer...) and you will just move your data from DVDs to that new media -
> and back in the circle of technology.
> :-)
>

Not that I'm trying to put this back on topic or anything, but Taiyo Yuden
brand optical media are rated for 99 years if you don't put a label on them.
Labels decrease the life span significantly.

Regarding future media, the trend is moving towards technologies that have
DRM integrally built in so CD may be the last long-term storage medium where
it will be relatively straightforward to decode the data.

There was an interesting optical media format out several years ago that
never saw the light of day (pun intended). Called OROM, it was an
interesting media because the reader had no moving parts. It was a small
smart-card sized flexible translucent plastic disk that had concentric
circles where data was stored. A device cable of writing the disks was
available from the onset. The reader worked by shining LEDs through the disk
onto a sensor below. The cards could hold about 150M or so but if the
technlogy had a chance to mature I'm sure that the density would have
increased. I believe the technology was by a company called ioptics.

Seems like it would have had great potential for this type of use case.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
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