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Wanna keep your data for 1,000 YEARS? No? Hard luck, HDS wants you to anyway

Combine Blu-ray and M-DISC and you get this monster

HDS' federal subsidiary says it has a Blu-ray optical storage platform for long term data preservation, with 1,000-year M-DISCs in prospect.

The kit - we say kit although no products have been announced yet, just this "platform" - is for US federal agencies who need to "preserve and archive mission-critical data indefinitely."

HDPP, the HDS Digital Preservation Platform, uses Blu-ray optical storage and, eventually Millenniata M-DISC technology.

This is not your average archive, with HDS Federal prez and CEO Mike Tanner saying: "To fulfil regulatory requirements, agencies are required to archive the data they generate and collect anywhere from five to over 100 years, while others have mandates that require data to be preserved forever.”

HDPP says Blu-ray stores can last up to 50 years, with M-DISC taking life out to 1,000 years. Its announcement has a quote from Dylan Riley, director, Office of Innovation, US Naval Air Systems Command in China Lake: "Most of our data is highly sensitive and must be properly safeguarded. Media and IT options related to the storage and handling of that data tend to be very limited. Writeable optical media remains a preferred technology in many cases because of the significant longevity and durability of the media.”

The Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division (NAWCD) wants to permanently store and access what it calls irreplaceable information. It's tested the M-DISC, which can be read in DVD-style drives, in harsh conditions and found: "None of the Millenniata media suffered any data degradation at all."

HDPP is rejecting tape for these federal archives. It's not providing any product information at all and is certainly saying nothing at all about Sony's 1TB Blu-ray archive disk initiative.

Neither is holographic storage mentioned. Nor is it saying if reader writer machines will handle both Blu-ray and M-DISC media .

One of the bedevilments of optical disk technology is that no Linear Tape Open (LTO) type organisation has sprung up to unify both standards and the industry, as has happened with tape. The dratted individual suppliers think they can go their own way and make it on their own. Look at LTO, you numbskulls, and get your act together. ®

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