Well, OK: maybe “only” 1000 years…

(see more recent initial review, above, somewhere)

(Before I go any further, I’d like to make a point. I think this technology is a milestone in the entire history of computers, and perhaps the most important invention since the computer itself.*)

Yep: there is digital technology coming in a mere few weeks that will yield DVDs with a 1000 year expected lifetime.

The burner will cost $150 – 200, (with the bard drive costing $49) and the discs around $3 each. 4GB.

You can at last archive your photos (and anything else that can go on a DVD).

I have already pre-ordered one.

Here’s the article:

http://www.informationweek.com/byte/reviews/personal-tech/storage-memory/231500076

and here’s where you can pre-order one:

http://millenniata.com/preorder/

Now, someone is sure to say “So what? The DVD player will be gone long before the DVD media dies, and you’ll have no way to recover the data.”

That, of course, is a common problem with all digital technology

Our TV’s were recently replaced; have you read a Jaz drive lately? Syquest?

That comment, however, misses the point: digital technology is “forever” only if it is maintained. That is, every few years (somewhere between 5 and 10 in the case of DVDs) one must re-store the data on new media. The problem, of course, is that one cannot know exactly _when_ a DVD will start going bad. It depends on several different factors, including storage direction, light, humidity, oxygen levels, temperature and so on.

Thus, to ensure continuity, one has to constantly check the readability of optical media, and even then it’s a crap-shoot, since while it may read fine in year four, at year 5 it may fail. So… did you make a backup in year 4?

The benefit of the new DVDs therefore isn’t so much that they last forever, as that they _will_ be readable when you need them to be… including the point at which DVDs are about to become passe, and you need to move the data to, say, holographic filing, or whatever comes next.

hth

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followup, longer-winded explanation

>ALL< digital technology will be superseded. RAM, drives, CPUs, power supplies, motherboards, cases, connectors… everything. The only practical way to look at computers is as consumables, with a time-to-live, and a need for replacement.

Data storage in particular is most subject to media deterioration and/or mechanical obsolescence. The price is constant diligence, and as I noted above, the crap-shoot nature of needing to second-guess when failure will occur. (Of course you can’t, so you have to keep -at least- two copies of everything… and that -doubles- your need to periodically inspect.)

I’ve personally seen “laser-rot” and other media issues; several variations on “mechanical” issues as well. About a year ago, I got concerned that I didn’t have all my photos, (some of the files going back nearly 20 years [ scans of film shots taken 40 years ago]) on a hard drive, but only on optical media. So I resigned myself to going through several hundred discs… to discover  that 6 of them would not read an any device I tried. I got a few of then to read by digging out of the garage a very old DVD drive and powering it up. But the other three, I was forced to dump. (I did not lose those photos, at least according to the labels because I had other backups of them.)

So, I was able to put all my photos on to a large hard drive. And, having just been thru all this, onto yet -another- large hard drive; and on to (way too many) Blu-Ray discs; and on to newer Taiyo Yuden optical.

I was lucky… and surely within a few years (weeks?) of having lost much more. (One of my correspondents said he’s counting on his DVDs lasting “15 or 20 years.” Given that we have not even hit that benchmark in the entire history of optical media, and that I’ve already personally seen failures, I expect that he’s in for a very rude awakening…)

So: the point of the long-lived DVDs is NOT that they will readable in 1000 years, or even in 30. The point is that they will be readable >when we need them to be readable< and we can eliminate the annual “replenish and replace” and attendant anxiety that comes with not knowing if your files are safe.

Yes: the DVD will eventually go the way of IDE  and Jaz drives… but at least when you must move to the latest and greatest new storage technique, you won’t have to cross your fingers and hope that your precious files are still there.

That has never been the case before, and is why this new technology is so important.

Tracy
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* Why? Because throughout the history of computers, whose job it is to manipulate data and save it, the “save” part has always been temporary. One has always had to go back and verify the integrity of the saved data. Never before has it been possible to save the data, and forget it until the replacement came along. This is a huge development.