Gizmodo: archiving

Delkin Archival Gold Blu-Ray Discs Keep Your Data Good for Two Centuries

Kit Eaton — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Manufacturers are powering up on their Blu-ray disc development, now the format war's over: just two weeks ago we had the 6x speed ones, and now Delkin has these archive-quality discs. According to Delkin they're the first BDs "guaranteed to preserve data safely for over 200 years" and they use some sort of patented phase-change tech to make the discs resistant to UV degradation. They're also 25GB, 4x speed burnable and have an anti-scratch coating. You're only going to want to preserve really important stuff on them though: a ten-pack will cost you $250. Now, to find a Blu-ray player that'll last two centuries... [Reghardware]

Ripserver NAS Makes CD Archiving Easypeasy

Kit Eaton — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:36:16 EST

Okay, so the CD is maybe slowly on its way out but for a while there'll be enough around to make the Ripserver NAS gadget useful. In use it's as simple as its case design: slot in a CD, and it automatically rips it, archives to its hard drive, and spits the CD out again. Linking up to your home network is then handled by gigabit connection. It rips in MP3 or FLAC format, syncs with leading home music streaming systems and even has USB ports allowing you to make backups or add on yet more storage. Available now in black or white, $1,200 for 500GB or $1,400 for 1TB. [Ripfactory via Techdigest]

Hitachi to Cram 5TB Into a 2.5-Inch-Thick Cartridge

Charlie White — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:15:20 EDT

Hitachi figured that if one Blu-ray disc holds 50GB of data, why not stack 100 super-thin discs on top of each other and cram them into a 2.5-inch thick cartridge? The result: 5TB of storage. That's just what the company is going to do with its SVOD (Stacked Volumetric Optical Discs) technology.

The Blu-ray version is still in the works, but the company says a DVD-based product will be available by early next year. The DVD version's 100 ultra-thin (92 micrometers) double-sided discs will combine to store 940GB on a cartridge, which will sell for around $340.

This could be an efficient way to archive reams of data, that is, until hard disks—and ultimately flash memory—get to be cheaper, more permanent and more portable. – Charlie White

Hitachi planning super data catridge by squeezing 100 Blu-Ray discs [Newlaunches]

Memorex Ships HD DVD-R Blanks, Gets Blank Stare from Consumers

Charlie White — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 12:07:11 EDT

As the HD-DVD burners and recorders slowly begin to trickle out, Memorex today began shipping HD DVD-R media. The 15GB single-layer discs will cost $20 apiece.

Maybe these blanks would work for archiving, but let's think about this for a minute. Spending $20 on a single blank HD DVD disc is not all that compelling when you can spend $50 and get a 200GB hard disk. Do the math: $1.33/GB for the HD DVD vs. $.25/GB for a SATA drive? That relatively slow write speed and extra cost of HD DVD discs pales by comparison to the 150MB/sec data transfer rate of SATA. But yeah, yeah, apples and oranges.

Now for HD video, that's another story. You can record 75 minutes of HD goodness on one of these babies. But good luck finding someone who has an HD DVD player on which to watch it. – Charlie White

Memorex HD DVD Discs Deliver Crystal-Clear High-Definition Recording [Finanzen.net]