Many pressed CD-ROMs and audio CDs will likely last over 100 years if stored properly. However, the tolerances in the standard are high so lots of manufacturers use cheaper materials and processes than intended while still producing discs with the CD logo. It will take decades before we really know which were worse than others. The most likely point of failure is delamination, which will leak air between the layers and oxidize the aluminum coating in a process named laser rot after Laserdiscs, the earliest commercial optical disc system.
Anyway, the longetivity of (re)writable CDs is indeed usually below 20 years.
No, it’s not about the thickness. Most of it is clear plastic anyway, the data layer is only in the top few dozen micrometers. Also, all CDs and later 12cm discs were 1 mm thick by spec.
Yes, I am talking about the top layer - some are def thiccer and more scratch resistant (I didn’t mean thicket like you would notice looking at it from the side).
The recording layers of the CDDAs (1983-1987) had already vanished. So they lasted no longer than 40 years.
"SHM-CD"s would probably meet that 100 year mark but DVDs made them pointless by the time they were first released.
Yes. Hugely important topic in itself. M-Disc is the current best we have, with claims they will last 1000 years if properly stored (limited by the plastic degredation). But ceramics should be more stable, and the speed claims look good. This is not the only tech solution vying to be a long term contender but looks like a potential good one.
I've been seeing news stories like this every couple of years for most of my life, and yet storage technology just continues to plod along at the same pace it always has. Nothing ever comes of it.
Vaporware is when software devs make claims about how great their yet-to-be-written software will be. Then, they never create it, either out of a lack of skill, time, or funding. Vaporware has, by definition, no proof of concept.
Hardware is a bit harder to call “Vaporware” since presumably they have working prototypes.
Vaporware historically includes stuff that never gets released officially, or was cancelled during the development process but was already advertised. One example of this was the Hellraiser game for the NES that would have pushed the capabilities of the console well beyond what it was ordinarily capable of because the cart included a Z80 CPU as a coprocessor. The Action Gamemaster (by Active Enterprises) in 1994. The Amiga Walker in 1996. Apple Interactive, which was a set-top box that ran OS 7, but it never went past the test type stage.
It’s a sensational headline, sure - but I manage a few 200TB single unit servers at work and my cell phone has more than 20x the storage the computer I took to college had, and probably 20x faster.
To claim what you are ignores the significant improvements we’ve seen in the past 2 decades.
idk, I've still got some 512kb floppies somewhere.
Next to me is a 512GB flash drive.
1997 - 2023 is 26 years for a 1,000,000x larger storage device.
So come 2049, that should be at 512PB, they're forecasting 10PB.
The firm claims it's cost-effective, fast, and scalable technology for future data storage because no energy is consumed to store data and it can last more than 5,000 years due to the fact it's made from ceramic. The best hard drives and best SSDs, by contrast, need to be replaced every few years.
lol, they for real discovered something that was discovered 12,000 years ago. ceramic keeps for a long time.
Data is written by two million laser beamlets that punch QR code-like nano-scale patterns into the surface of the media. The laser pulse is sharpened by a digital micromirror device, and shaped by microscope optics onto the surface of the data carrier. This process imprints holes – or no holes – onto the surface layer, which represents binary information.
It’s futuristic punchcards. We’ve come full circle.
Pretty much, yeah! CDs and blu-rays aren’t all that different from punch cards, as the data is literally stored as indentations on the disc with a reflective layer. Arguably CD-RWs are kind of different as they change the reflectivity of a material itself… Hard drives and floppies are maaaaybe slightly different too because they use changes in magnetism instead of physical indentations too. You could probably argue that flash and DRAM aren’t glorified punchcards? But I mean, ultimately all data is stored in a physical medium somehow so it’s always going to have some resemblance!
A punchcard is two dimensional. Actually you can have multiple dimensions on a punch card, the positions of the card can store different data and you can determine what that is by the position of holes on another part of the card.
Whereas a paper tape, or a magnetic tape is serial and has only one dimension (you can divide the tape into different bands though).
I would even argue most storage is used as write once storage. From backup systems to libraries, a lot of data is data we want to just record, and never overwrite.
I feel like we don’t appreciate the history of data storage enough! It’s kind of wild looking at how different the world was when CD-Rs came out. They could store substantially more data than a typical hard drive of the time and were dirt cheap. So you would get bulletin boards hosting content from optical drives and stuff. It’s also (partially) why you would have to use discs for games in the past, instead of just installing them to the hard drive. When hard drives are expensive it’s probably better to just stream music and assets from an optical disc instead of taking up precious space. Sometimes you could play a game (or part of it) without the disc, but you wouldn’t get music because that was left on the disc.
Seems like thered be some extra hoops to get through for differential backups, impossible to us for most daily applications, probably better suited for things like laboratory and archives…
Very happy to hear you saying this, well, this is science not magics : Evanescent field en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescent_field
In electromagnetics, an evanescent field, or evanescent wave, is an oscillating electric and/or magnetic field that does not propagate as an electromagnetic…
Thanks for these kind words Mr C. Happy.
(I know there must be a joke and I’m sorry that I do not get it. I have a lot of difficulty to grasp many jokes. Thanks anyway.)
The line "I like your funny words, magic man" is from this scene from Clone High. People use it when they want to show they don't understand what was said but appreciated it none the less. CrackHappy changed it to "magnet man" because they are least got that much from what you were saying.
Aaah ! that’s why ! Thanks :)
People wouldn’t believe but since 10 years I’ve watched maybe 5 to 10 hours (total) of video including YouTube, TV and whatever. Also went to cinema maybe five times.
This would absolutely make sense. Unfortunately, they don’t say whether or not (it’s 3D) in the article. Well … they do describe it as a microscopic QR code which is 2D.
Add comment