Permanent Digital Data Storage : A Materials Approach

Abstract

Permanent marks, interpreted as bits, are the sine qua non of deep archival storage. Until about 2006, this area of research apparently did not exist, but advances in the past several years at Brigham Young University and at Millenniata, Inc., have produced one product (the M-Disc - a permanent recordable optical disc of DVD capacity), a follow-on recordable optical disc of Blu-ray capacity, work on multi-layer optical discs of Blu-ray capacity on each layer, work on a permanent solid-state storage medium, and work on a permanent optical tape storage medium. This paper explains the approach used to develop these products and advance the research for permanent digital data storage.