Did you know common optical discs used for back up — are only expected to last 3 to 5 years.
–PC Pitstop.
How Long Will Your Files Last
By Bob Rankin
Will Your Files Last a Thousand Years?
Would you be surprised to learn that standard CD and DVD discs have an expected lifespan of just 3 to 5 years? If your precious memories are backed up on optical discs, you might want to go looking for a medium that will protect your documents and photos a bit longer. How about a solution that promises 1000 years? Read on…
Long-Term File Storage
The Acer Aspire V5-561P is a “run of the mill” $550, 15-inch ultra-slim notebook, according to Cnet’s review, except for one extraordinary feature: its DVD writer can store data on discs that will still be readable 1,000 years from now. However, Acer doesn’t deem this feature important enough to mention on the V5-561P’s product information pages. So should you get excited about it?
The developer of this long-lived data storage technology, Milleniata LLC, sure thinks so. On a Web site that’s long on gee-whiz and short on technical details, the virtues of M-DISC optical discs and read/write drives are extolled from every angle. Here is how M-DISC works:
Standard CD/DVD technology uses a laser beam to heat a layer of organic dye that is sandwiched between polycarbonate sheets. The heated point, which can be very tiny, first swells like a bubble and finally collapses into a pit in the dye layer. A pattern of pit/no-pit areas on the disc’s surface constitute binary code that can be read by the same laser that wrote it. That is, the pattern can be read as long as the laser-burnt pits last.
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Excerpt shared with permission from Bob Rankin.
