“A new optical disk technology offers a fundamental new
capability — which is storing offline archives in a format
with a shelf life of many decades (or even centuries). The key is
in the pits: unlike commonly available dye-based CD-R and DVD-R
media, the Millenniata writer actually laser etches physical pits
into the writable layer of its “M-Disc” DVD-ROMs. Because the pits
are physical structures, like the pits on pressed media, they have
the same kind of shelf-life — but in a way that is economical
for low-copy archives. The niche here is for digital archives of
“time capsule” data: family photographs, historical records,
original manuscripts, video footage and masters, and so on. Perhaps
more remarkably, the drives and disks, are affordable enough for
the target applications and available commercially right now.“One of the deepest embarrassments of the digital age has been
the lack of any really permanent way to store bits. The great
promise of digital storage has been the idea of “perfect copies,”
and most people have assumed that would entail permanence as
well.”