Do they last more than 20 years in ideal conditions?
Optical discs are already incredibly resistant and shouldn’t be expected to fail in your lifetime. Most of the times they do, it’s either old media (cd and dvd both had physical flaws in design), damage, or mistakes in manufacturing.
There’s really no reason for the discs to degrade. It’s just stamped plastic.
As an optical media enthusiast, I’ve done a fair amount of research into how, why, and when discs fail. Because the discs use two or more polycarbonate layers pressed together, moisture can sometimes work its way between the layers and speed up degradation, especially if a disc has been overly flexed at the center. Heat and UV can also speed up degradation.
Another problem is that plastic is petroleum-based and it breaks down over time. A lot of people think that the reflective layer (the metal layer) is actually the data layer but it almost never is. The data layer itself is polycarbonate, sandwiched between the reflective layers and more polycarbonate layers.
The newer discs like blu-ray movies are made with better plastics that should last at least 100 years. Depending on the dye layer of writable and rewritable blu-rays, they should last either at least 25 years or 100 years.
What disc is left? blu ray?
Bluray and uhd bluray are the current standard
The foil coating usually deteriorates first
On cds, yes. Technology from the 80s, designed in the 70s.
So optical drives will make a come back perhaps? Guess this means we’ll have malware similar to in the early days where it would spontaneously open your CD-ROM drive “as a cupholder.”
I used Computer Management in school and at work to pop open people’s CD drives. I did a lot of dumb stuff.
These will most definitely not enter the consumer space. They are intended for enterprise use.
I’d said over on the Old Place back during the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD wsrs that people really liked their 7" optical media. I got down voted to hell for it then, but I’m glad to see I wasn’t totally wrong.
Cheap, high density media has its applications. Tape is still the preferred long-term storage medium for backups in a lot of industy sectors because still stores gobs of data, it’s dirt cheap, compact, light and it transports easily. If you don’t need it to be fast, or you’re regularly producing large scale data sets that are essentially disposable after some time, then it’s a good compromise.
No reason this tech couldn’t step into that niche when it hits the right price point.
I absolutely agree with you, hovewer lto-9 18tb tape costs same money 20tb hdd costs
How to lose EVERYTHING in one go.
Back to spinny drives we go?
Removed by mod
I should have been more clear: spinny removable storage like CDs.
Yeah, all my computers have spin HDD for storage and SSD for OS and most-used programs.
Imagine how slow these would be
Optical media have some disadvantages to conventional HDD and SSD though, unless they have reliable scratch and shatter protection.
Unless the 1.6petabytes is all photos you have ever taken of people and all the photos and videos everyone has ever taken of you and all your family, I hope there’s a way for a person to wrap their mind around having 1.6petabits. maybe it’s a big text file that draws your name from random text characters to the order of 1.6petabits. it could be mostly just zeros.
