R: Large discs

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 5 Jan 2018, Mazzini Alessandro via cctalk wrote:
> The M kind of dvd supports guarantee over 1000 years of retention, and
> resistance to acid/alien invasion/etc

let's start with:
"How old is the oldest surviving M-disc?"
"Is there a form of machine readable data older than 150 years?"
"Have they completely figured out Stonehenge?"
[Don't you hate rhetorical questions?]

They can postulate theoretical life.
They can bake them, freeze them, hold them up in a tornado, use them 
as Starbucks coasters, etc., and then measure how much wear, damage, and 
aging they detect, and extrapolate from there.
Have they successfully figured out what factors will shorten the life?
Are there any factors that they missed?   (such as a previously 
unnoticed air pollutant that suddenly becomes common (Sontaran Atmos?) 
that destroys the binder layer, or an imaginary wireless signal that 
corrupts all m-discs within range?)


Every new development since, and including, CD has been hyped as 
unbelievably long lasting, such as "50 years!".  Then, over time, they 
find out more about the risk factors, and the retention time gets 
shortened.   Some of those "many decades" things ended up going bad in a 
few years.

If you buy M-Disc, and it doesn't last 1000 years, . . .
1) Will Verbatim be around to honor a warranty?
2) Is that a full replacement warranty, or is it "pro-rated"?
3) How do you store a drive to last that long?
4) Is any of OUR data worth keeping long-term?

Actual data about data retention time certainly exists.  But, I couldn't 
trivially Google it.
[Yes, "Google" as a verb resulted in a case claiming that once it becomes 
a verb, that the trademark becomes invalid!
http://blogs.findlaw.com/supreme_court/2017/08/scotus-to-consider-whether-google-trademark-is-generic.html
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/supreme-court-wont-nullify-google-trademark-in-genericide-challenge/
]

'course you will get a firehose worth of anecdotal crap, such as
"I bought some discs on eBay, and they went bad" and
"They last FOREVER! The discs that I bought in high school 3 years ago 
are still good!"

I was surprised that M-disc.com didn't put up links (other than a bar 
graph without a scale!) providing the retention data for comparison.  Does 
that mean that it is BETTER than we thought?


But, M-Disc DOES seem like the best long-term form.  So, I will get an 
M-disc compatible BDXL, and a stack of media (100G M-Disc are EXPENSIVE!) 
That action on my part, will surely ensure the immediate development and 
release of cheaper, more compact, faster, longer lasting storage systems, 
such as $5 10,000 year 10GB/S PetaByte thumb-drives ("The LottaByte NSA 
Utah Data Center https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/   will fit in 
your pocket") 
(or my death, and my heirs will instantaneously dumpster everything that I have)


--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com