History (2004): Sony Professional Disc of DATA (ProDATA)

This article was published by the Museum of Obsolete Media.

Sony Professional Disc for DATA (2004-2007)

Professional Disc for DATA (also known as ProDATA) was an optical disc format introduced in 2004 by Sony. It was intended for creating backups of data, and had a capacity of 23GB per side.

It is virtually identical to (but incompatible with) Professional Disc, used for the XDCAM digital video system. However, both formats used blue lasers, and both discs came in protective caddies.

Both write-once and rewritable versions were available.

In 2006, recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-R and BD-RE) became available, and in 2007, Professional Disc for DATA was declared ‘end of life’ by Sony.

Since 2009, Sony has also introduced the ability to store data on Professional Discs for the XDCAM system, in a dedicated ‘User Data’ folder.