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from the what-is-the-read/write-speed? dept.
Why Microsoft and Warner Bros. Archived the Original 'Superman' Movie on a Futuristic Glass Disc
Microsoft has teamed up with Warner Bros. to store a copy of the 1978 movie "Superman" on a small glass disc about the size of a coaster. The collaboration, which will be officially unveiled at Microsoft's Ignite 2019 conference in Orlando, Florida Monday, is a first test case for a new storage technology that could eventually help safeguard Hollywood's movies and TV shows, as well as many other forms of data, for centuries to come.
"Glass has a very, very long lifetime," said Microsoft Research principal researcher Ant Rowstron in a recent conversation with Variety. "Thousands of years."
[Image] The piece of silica glass storing the 1978 "Superman" movie, measuring 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2 mm. The glass contains 75.6 GB of data plus error redundancy codes.
Microsoft began to investigate glass as a storage medium in 2016 in partnership with the University of Southampton Optoelectonics Research Centre. The goal of these efforts, dubbed "Project Silica," is to find a new storage medium optimized for what industry insiders like to call cold data — the type of data you likely won't need to access for months, years, or even decades. It's data that doesn't need to sit on a server, ready to be used 24/7, but that is kept in a vault, away from anything that could corrupt it.
This is not the Superman memory crystal we need.
Also at The Verge.
Related: "5D" Laser-Based Polarization Vortex Storage Could Hold Hundreds of Terabytes for Billions of Years
(Score: 2) by progo on Wednesday November 06 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
Recordable Blu Ray discs aren't designed to store precious archives in libraries. When I decided what to use to archive my home video projects' source files, I decided on Blu Ray, with the understanding that recordable DVDs last maybe 5 to 20 years, and if you write two copies and verify often enough, you might be okay -- and maybe Blu Ray is like that.
You don't archive precious data owned by an organization with a lot of money, on a system like recordable Blu Ray.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @12:26AM (1 child)
I don't know if they use a glass substrate in one of their layers, but the m-disc discs are designed for the exact archival purposes Microsoft's claim to be for, are already on market, and are available in 4.7, 25, 50, and 100GB formats. Microsoft's in comparison is more complicated, requires machine learning and a different drive, and is likely to be patented up the ass for as long as possible, even above and beyond Bluray.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 07 2019, @02:32AM
I would be surprised if the Microsoft prototype tops out at 75 GB, but it needs to hit 100 TB to compete with other technologies.
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