The Blu-ray Successor: Archival Disc

JAPANESE HARDWARE MAKERS Sony and Panasonic have combined to create a cold storage medium.

Following from a development agreement signed last June, the two companies have announced the Archival Disc. The successor to the format war winning Blu-ray disc, the Archival Disc format is not aimed at the general public but rather for storing the expanding amounts of archive or cold storage data on company servers.

At launch, a single Archival Disc will hold 300GB of data, but the alliance, both of which participated in the marketing of Blu-ray, have committed to perfect the format with a view to eventually supporting 1TB of storage though implementation of multi-layering, increased data density and measures to avoid interference between layers.

The double-sided discs are not rewritable and are designed for the permanent storage of records, raw video footage and other materials that are needed to be filed but are rarely accessed.

Link

It will be interesting to see what capabilities the successor to Blu-ray will have and what the reaction will be like when it is eventually released to the general public. (Even though the article states otherwise, it is inevitable that this format will transcend business-only use).

The possibilities for movies and games are very exciting. I guess movies will be easier to fill up that 300GB disc with bonus content, but game developers might struggle to produce enough content to fill a disc.

While the eventual 1TB per disc target is impressive, I can't see businesses utilising this new technology for storage purposes over other currently available options such as network hard drives.

It's not re writable, so it won't take off until they fix that or another technology will come and take the limelight away. Mistakes happen, often. Often enough that you have to go back and change, edit and re save documents over and over again. Also, Idk if a company would trust 1 TB of date on a single, easily-destructible disc.

Perhaps as another means to back up storage?

I don't see the application being very useful in the current description.

Quite a lot of cold archiving is done using robot tape libraries and they can automatically duplicate anything on a tape to ensure theres multiple copies, Theres is a move more to disk based systems where a lot of the drives are powered off unless needed

reply to post by Dark Ghost


I was just reading where an install of Titanfall ran about 45 GB. There is no offline element for the game either. Plus, that is just the initial game, there is sure to be dlc. I'm sure in a few years game developers will love to have that much space to use on a physical disc and attempt to use all 300+ gigs.

reply to post by Dark Ghost


More useless material to throw away in a few years... We dont need Cd's... Just put movies online. People are just going to end up Torrenting movies anyways. Then thats one less thing to fill Landfills with.

reply to post by Dark Ghost


This could be a next step towards 4K, seeing how downloading 4K content is a pain in the ass for now.
Useless or not It's a great step towards new technology, especially how the size of things is growing at fast speed.

The successor for Bluray will be some sort of flash drive or chip, if it isn't already. I have a 128gb flash drive, and in a few years they will most likely have 1tb drives the same size.

There needs to be a physical version of media, instead of everything being just "in the cloud". I'm really surprised that they haven't started selling movies or albums on little disposable flash drives.

PsychoEmperor
It's not re writable, so it won't take off until they fix that or another technology will come and take the limelight away. Mistakes happen, often. Often enough that you have to go back and change, edit and re save documents over and over again. Also, Idk if a company would trust 1 TB of date on a single, easily-destructible disc.

Perhaps as another means to back up storage?

I don't see the application being very useful in the current description.

Not in a records management capacity. Archived information relies on verbatim copies, non-editable and stored away from people. What is the point of archiving a system for record keeping, if you can go and edit the data any time you want. Critical data, suddenly has missing information, or added information that changes the nature of the data.

And it's been that way for as long as I can remember.

jessejamesxx
The successor for Bluray will be some sort of flash drive or chip, if it isn't already. I have a 128gb flash drive, and in a few years they will most likely have 1tb drives the same size.

There needs to be a physical version of media, instead of everything being just "in the cloud". I'm really surprised that they haven't started selling movies or albums on little disposable flash drives.

A storage/archival format will ALWAYS be required. Why use re-writable media, that has a failure point?

Is no one understanding, Archival Disc? Why are you all seeing your movies and games?

It's about time there was a better way than old tapes. 1tb optical drives. Want one. now!

sn0rch

jessejamesxx
The successor for Bluray will be some sort of flash drive or chip, if it isn't already. I have a 128gb flash drive, and in a few years they will most likely have 1tb drives the same size.

There needs to be a physical version of media, instead of everything being just "in the cloud". I'm really surprised that they haven't started selling movies or albums on little disposable flash drives.

A storage/archival format will ALWAYS be required. Why use re-writable media, that has a failure point?

Is no one understanding, Archival Disc? Why are you all seeing your movies and games?

I see your point. I was thinking on terms of a "successor to Bluray" meaning the next eventual winner like Bluray was to DVDs. The successor format has to be widely accepted and available, like Bluray was and HD wasn't. Portable harddrives are the future in that respect.

sn0rch

jessejamesxx
The successor for Bluray will be some sort of flash drive or chip, if it isn't already. I have a 128gb flash drive, and in a few years they will most likely have 1tb drives the same size.

There needs to be a physical version of media, instead of everything being just "in the cloud". I'm really surprised that they haven't started selling movies or albums on little disposable flash drives.

A storage/archival format will ALWAYS be required. Why use re-writable media, that has a failure point?

Is no one understanding, Archival Disc? Why are you all seeing your movies and games?

I don't see this as being the blu-ray successor, but you are correct in that it's perfect for archives information.