

DVD-R discs with 160+ years lifespan - urza
http://www.datatresordisc.eu/by-product-dtd.html

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urza
I believe this deserves some attention. This is a company based in Czech
Republic (Europe) which manufactures and sells DVD-R discs based on metal-
ceramic recording layers for long term data storage and archival use. The
product was tested by laboratories in Switzerland and guaranteed lifespan is
160 years. Among other things the disk should withstand (as they claim) 15
minutes in boiling water or putting in a freezer. One disk costs about 3€/4$.

They have terribly looking website, but none the less, the product seems very
interesting. Notable is that Czech Government uses this technology as part of
their backup solution. I discovered it accidently, but I thing it may be
interesting in context of recent discussion about backup solutions with regard
to Amazon Glacier etc.

(I am not affiliated with the company in any way.)

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Piskvorrr
160 years falls somewhat short of "forever"; as for the claims: how do you
test for a 160 year lifespan, and more importantly: how will you read this in
160 years, assuming it _is_ still readable? I have 25-year-old 9" floppy
disks, but I have no way to read them - no drives, and even if I scavenged one
online, no computers with a compatible interface.

Even though it's an impressive claim, unless they can somehow provide a
160-year lifespan _drive_ , I'm less than impressed.

~~~
urza
Seems there is some kind of ECMA testing for this, they had the disk at 80
degrees Celsius and 80 % humidity for equivalent of 160 years at normal
conditions. Dont ask me more, this is all there was to it in this article:
[czech] [http://technet.idnes.cz/cesi-jako-jedini-na-svete-vyrabi-
dvd...](http://technet.idnes.cz/cesi-jako-jedini-na-svete-vyrabi-dvd-disky-
ktere-vas-dvakrat-
preziji-11j-/tec_reportaze.aspx?c=A110502_120308_tec_reportaze_nyv)

You make a good point with the reader problem.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Moreover, _data_ compatibility gets hard - who can read EBCDIC-encoded data
nowadays? Or even a keybcs2-encoded file written in the T602 editor (a format
fifteen years old - and already completely obsolete)?

