The U.S. Department of Defense Naval Air Warfare Weapon’s Division facility at China Lake, California is interested in digitizing, permanently storing, and providing access to irreplaceable information. The goal is to make content easily accessible to researchers and permanently archive the information without the need to store it in environmentally controlled conditions. Millenniata’s technology was of great interest because of the use of non-reactive data layers and backward compatibility to provide a stable, accessible, permanent storage solution.
The reported tests were run to ensure that the media would hold-up under the harshest environments over long periods of time. NAWCWD tested five different brands of archival-quality, dye-based recordable DVD discs and the Millenniata™ discs.
Conclusion
“None of the Millenniata media suffered any data degradation at all. Every other brand tested showed large increases in data errors after the stress period. Many of the discs were so damaged that they could not be recognized as DVDs by the disc analyzer” (p.i)
Millenniata
Millenniata, Inc. is a permanent archival technology company based in Provo, Utah. The company’s patented Write Once, Read Forever™ technology is the world’s first stable digital archival solution that is presently composed of the M-DISC™ and M-READY™ drive. The M-DISC™ is the first backward-compatible non-dye based DVD optical technology constructed of inorganic materials that are known to last centuries. The M-READY™ drive is a high-quality optical drive that is specifically designed to laser etch digital information onto the M-DISC™. This combination allows information to be written once and read over time and offers the best archival data storage solution in the industry.
Testing
All optical media were required to meet certain performance criteria before testing (Section 2.2, p.6-8). A total of 25 discs from each of six brands, including Millenniata, were tested for a total of 150 test discs. Drive and disc performance was analyzed to determine which drive/disc combination provided the best writequality for each brand of media (Table 2-5, p.7).
“None of the Millenniata media suffered any data degradation at all.”
The Millenniata discs were burned using the M-READY™ drive. There was great variation in quality with some brands of dye-based discs, even within the same batch of discs. For two brands in particular, it took more than 50 discs each to get the 25 discs required for the test (Table 3-2, pg. 27).
The discs were stressed in a combined temperature, humidity, and light cycle (Section 1.2.2, p.3). The discs were subject to the following test conditions in the environmental chamber: 85°C, 85% relative humidity (conditions specified in ECMA-379) and full spectrum light (per MIL Std. 810G) (Figure 1-1, p.3). The test was repeated three times with identical results.
Naval Air Warfare Center
China Lake is one of the eight Naval Air System Command sites and part of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, delivering the force, with the right readiness, at the right cost, at the right time – today, and in the future. China Lake, home to the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, provides efficient deployment of new weapon systems through a unique combination of its co-located laboratories, ranges, weapons test squadrons and the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadrons NINE and THREE-ONE. The site supports fleet training and tactics development, including major exercises on the Land Range, Superior Valley Tactical Training Range and Electronic Combat Range.
Please send us pricing and ordering information. We are looking for alternatives to replace standard optical systems with this.
Any whitepapers etc. too please send to me.
Regards,
Martin Ederveen
Business Consultant
Aprycus BV
The Netherlands
Martin, sorry for the delay but please contact us at sales@millenniata.com and we will get you everything you need.
I don’t understand why USB 3.0 was not used. The company has a chance to build the newer technology into their machines and they choose USB 2.0. The saving grace is some of the external models offer esata. Just mho.
I see your point. But USB 3.0 is sort of spotty. Many USB external hard drive manufacturers have had to bundle USB 3.0 controllers with their drives to avoid compatibility problems. But why they didn’t go with E-SATA makes no sense to me. I suspect the answer is probably because the recording speed of M-Disc is the real bottleneck in performance and not the USB 2.0 interface. But even so, when you connect even one USB 2.0 device to a 3.0 bus you slow the entire bus. Not good.
Thanks for the comment, John. Future variations of drives and updates will undoubtedly take advantage of USB 3.0.
Will you be making a internal model that will be an all-in-one drive?
Thanks,
Gary
Our current product lineup is what we will have for the near future. If a larger demand should arise for an internal all-in-one drive then we would discuss the opportunity with LG. But for now, the external BE12LU38 drive is the all-in-one option.
I don’t understand why USB 3.0 was not used. The company has a chance to build the newer technology into their machines and they choose USB 2.0. The saving grace is some of the external models offer esata. Just mho.
+1
Is this only going to be available in conventional DVD (4.7gb) format?
Seems pretty useless for my large projects if I have to spam all my data across scores of discs. Any plans on Dual Layer or some proprietary media?
We recognize that increased storage space is paramount to our customers and the industry. We are continually working to improve our capabilities, which includes working on a “Blu-ray” type M-DISC and other larger capacity solutions that are as durable as the current M-DISC. We will keep everyone updated when more information is available concerning these endeavors.
I live in the UK and tried to buy the external drive ( and 25 Discs ) from your website but all my browsers reported that your site was not fully secure ( no locked padlock shown on browser ).
Tried Firefox and Safari. Please could you fix this. When will blank M-Discs and Writers be available in the UK ?
We are having the IT team look into this and we’ll send you an email with an update or resolution.
I’m so very happy that this kind of longevity in digital storage is actually available in 2012, and at a reasonable price! I’m ditching my creative, expensive ideas to secure time-capsule worthy storage for info, & going with your sensible system. Anyone complaining about ONLY having 4.7 GB available, should remember what we had available just “yesterday” (quickly degrading discs), and consider the alternatives today (there are none). I suspect any double layer discs being developed will have to be flipped over to access full capacity.
I’m just grateful for this first, (really BIG) step.
Thank You.
Thank you for the kind comments, we appreciate the feedback!
Here, here! I will be equipping my next system with an M-Drive and looking forward to “flippable” M-Discs!
I agree with your position vis-á-vis USB 3.0; not stable enough nor widely supported yet (plus one USB 2.0 device on the controller and it’s all dragged down to USB 2.0 speed anyhow). However, eSATA does make sense (and you could market a quality eSATA interface card if you wanted to). Have a great week!
Thanks for the comments Jim! We take everyone’s feedback seriously and will look into incorporating them into our technology. Though with regards to drives, we are limited to those features that LG has currently opted to support. But, with the newer motherboard chip sets incorporating native 3.0 support we are confident that more drives in the future will support USB 3.0.