The Ultimate Archival Solution!

Talk about unimpressive. Folks - 75sqmm is H-U-G-E; and 2 mm ain't super thin either - it's A LOT thicker than a CD, which is 1.2 mm!!! And for all that, it stores a measly 75GB. Weak, weak, weak. Wake me up when you can store petabytes or exabytes in something that's smaller than a grain of sand - which would still be many orders of magnitude less impressive than what already exists in nature - to give you an idea of just how extremely weak this microsoft product is, consider that the all the DNA in a human would hardly be big enough to see and it would contain about 150 Zettabytes - I-N-F-N-I-T-E-L-Y greater than this measly "accomplishment":

https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/

- oh, and the DNA structure is extremely stable, capable of lasting for millions of years. Here we are with all our technology and we are not even within lightyears of distance to this data storage that already exists in nature. And this super - super - weak "accomplishment" is supposed to be some kind of "ultimate" archival solution?? Wow, talk about a low bar. Color me supremely unimpressed.
 
OldCorpse said:
Talk about unimpressive. Folks - 75sqmm is H-U-G-E; and 2 mm ain't super thin either - it's A LOT thicker than a CD, which is 1.2 mm!!! And for all that, it stores a measly 75GB. Weak, weak, weak. Wake me up when you can store petabytes or exabytes in something that's smaller than a grain of sand - which would still be many orders of magnitude less impressive than what already exists in nature - to give you an idea of just how extremely weak this microsoft product is, consider that the all the DNA in a human would hardly be big enough to see and it would contain about 150 Zettabytes - I-N-F-N-I-T-E-L-Y greater than this measly "accomplishment":

https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/

- oh, and the DNA structure is extremely stable, capable of lasting for millions of years. Here we are with all our technology and we are not even within lightyears of distance to this data storage that already exists in nature. And this super - super - weak "accomplishment" is supposed to be some kind of "ultimate" archival solution?? Wow, talk about a low bar. Color me supremely unimpressed.
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This is for cold, archival storage of vital assets that won't ever degrade. Compared to how films are archived now by the studios it's a massive improvement in size, durability and convenience. The article makes this pretty clear. It's not for jo-blo to archive his library of porn.
 
For the last few years any mission critical stuff I need to archive for any unknown period of time I use Taiyo Yuden LTH BD-R discs. They are cheap enough and are pretty bullet proof. Not good as BD video playback discs in most players but for data archiving pretty secure. Can be burnt with any decent BD burner. I see Delkin are shipping archival 25GB Blu-ray Disc with a claimed 200 year life. I guess just make sure you pack a couple of burners and a PC with that archive if you want it accessed in a hundred years or so :)

Chris Young

https://www.ebay.com/itm/50-Pack-JV...897077?hash=item2620e8fc35:g:QmwAAOxyyF5RK5Cs

https://www.adorama.com/alc/0010435/blogarticle/Delkin-shipping-archival-25GB-Blu-ray-Disc
 
cyvideo said:
...claimed 200 year life. I guess just make sure you pack a couple of burners and a PC with that archive if you want it accessed in a hundred years or so :)

Chris Young
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And here lies the problem, as I see it, with pretty much any "digital" type of long-term archive. Is there going to be equipment that can read/decode/play it still around when it's needed down the road, or a way to leave detailed instructions for those future generations to be able access it. What good is an archive medium that can last hundreds of years or longer, if the data it possesses is inaccessible. We didn't need electricity or computers to see cave paintings.

Obviously, we do need some way to reliably preserve our history and culture long-term for future generations, but we also need to make sure that they will able to "read" it.
 
Run&Gun said:
And here lies the problem, as I see it, with pretty much any "digital" type of long-term archive. Is there going to be equipment that can read/decode/play it still around when it's needed down the road, or a way to leave detailed instructions for those future generations to be able access it. What good is an archive medium that can last hundreds of years or longer, if the data it possesses is inaccessible. We didn't need electricity or computers to see cave paintings.

Obviously, we do need some way to reliably preserve our history and culture long-term for future generations, but we also need to make sure that they will able to "read" it.
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That's the ONE advantage the current preferred method for archiving film has. The studios print even their digitally shot movies onto black and white 35mm film stock, three times for each color channel. Time consuming, takes a ton of space, loses a generation of quality and needs to be stored in a carefully climate controlled environment. But if a less technologically advanced society finds it one day, they will be able to physically see that it has imagery on it, and if they have any technological sophistication, should be able to figure out how to play it.
 
That is, as long as it is not exposed to light, which will scramble the data.
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Not a good choice then, far too fragile, anything involving electrons is going to be fragile. Might as well burn "pips" into the diamond and read it like an optical disk. Could burn pips into gold foil sheets but those would be fragile to physical damage. Anything that i essentially read/write/rewriteable is going to have a finite lifetime.

You could use stone slabs and a chisel and get a trinary coding (raised bump, indented bump, surface level), then even blind people could read back the trinary encoding.
 
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