New Promising Long Term Archiving Optical Media

One of the most missing pieces in data storage is a reliable high-capacity long-term WORM (Write-Once Read-Many) disc media for archiving, able to retain data for 100 years or more, and at a reasonable price. Today most companies use magnetic supports. With HDDs or tapes, you need to migrate all the content or to verify it each three to five years, a long and annoying process. Nothing really appeared to satisfy this need and we even see the revival of an old technology like micrographics.

SNIA has formed a group on the subject: the Long-Term Digital Information Retention and Preservation Technical Working Group. Some firms have working on it like Norsam with HD-Rosetta, Millenniata with M-Disc or Verbatim with Arledia DVD-R. There was also the promising Century Disc from Digipress, now in the hands of Mimeos in The Netherlands.

In the remarkable French magazine MOS Magazine on paper (and soon to be available on PDF), we discovered in the last issue (January/February 2011, ≠ 268) a new technology having the potential to succeed, the DVD+R DataTresorDisc from Northern Star spol, s.r.o., and a project by Essilex SAS.

Essilex in France
Essilex is a start-up in stealth mode based in Paris, France, and founded last December. Its idea is to work with labs on long term archiving media based on optical discs. The founders are people who were in charge of a report Longévité de l’information numérique published by the French Academy of Sciences and Technologies with the addition of executive Gaëlle Pinson.

Northern Star in Czech Republic
Much more advanced is the work of Northern Star, in Praha, Czech Republic, its manager being Heda Polívková. This company is located in the offices of another one, Eximpo, involved since mid-2006 in the production of optical media under a license agreement with Philips and that will be in charge of manufacturing the new patented DataTresorDisc.

It’s a standard 12cm 4.7GB DVD+R but with a completely different recording layer. It’s not organic substances from the group AZO, cyanine and phthalocyanine. "The disadvantages of the organic materials are the crystallic structure that absorbs humidity and the material properties change with time due to the impact of light," said Northern Star. DataTresorDisc is based on on metal-ceramic and semi-metal recording layer. "Compared to standard DVD+R, none of the recording layer materials is subjected to natural aging process nor does it corrode," adds Northern Star. The two substrates of 0,6mm thickness are produced from polycarbonate resin but the company is exploring glass, offering higher longevity.

                 DataTresordisc from Northern Star

This new optical disc is guaranteed for more than 100 years and the Czech engineers speak about 160 years following their own testing.

Price is acceptable: €4.10 per disc sold in a 10 or 25 cake for a small quantity ordering, wrote MOS Magazine.

Relatively small inconvenience: to write on this DataTresorDisc you cannot use all the DVD writers and all the burning software but the company give the list of the recommended products that are available on the market. For the software, there are only two: CDBurner XP and Ahampo Burning Studio 10 for Windows with no more than 4X speed because the media probably needs a powerful laser. Several models of Asus, LG, Lite-On, Plextor and Samsung are able to burn the discs. MOS Magazine has even burned few media using two LG and Lite-On drives with CDBurner XP, and then tests them with Nero DiscSpeed 5 and Opti Drive Control, to finally getting good results.