Products
About the Millennial DiscTM and the Millennial WriterTM
Millenniata’s products are the new Millennial DiscTM and the Millennial WriterTM. Together, these products will revolutionize the way we store and preserve information in the digital age.
Instead of burning new CDs or creating new magnetic tape backups every few years, companies and individuals will be able to write information onto a Millennial Disc using a standard desktop computer equipped with the Millennial Writer, and archive the data in its initial format for a thousand years.
What’s more, the Millennial Disc is backwards compatible, so existing CD and DVD drives are able to read data from the new Millennial Disc.
Many methods for storing and preserving information have been developed and practiced over the centuries, including hieroglyphics, papyrus scrolls, books, photographs, engravings, etc. Each of these information storage technologies have shown that they can last for centuries when properly archived.
The rapid changeover of modern information storage to digital formats and the corresponding rapid increase of the volume of information to be stored now present daunting challenges.
Despite the nearly 40 years since digital information technology entered the mainstream, no satisfactory digital information storage technology has emerged that can be trusted to carry our historical information into the future — that is, without intervention.
Digital information data storage technology comes in three general formats: 1) solid-state, 2) magnetic, and 3) optical.
Solid-state storage includes flash memory packaged as “flash drives” (also known as ‘jump’ drives or ‘thumb’ drives), and the memory cards used in digital cameras and cell phones.
Magnetic storage includes hard disc drives, floppy disc drives and magnetic tape.
Optical storage includes CD-R, DVD-R, Blu-Ray discs, and HD-DVD discs.
None of these storage methods are capable of the stable storage of data for even decades, let alone centuries.
Research shows the dominant technologies provide reliable storage times as follows:
- Recordable optical discs: 7 to 15 years
- Magnetic tape: 30 years
- Magnetic discs: 11 years
- Solid-State memory: 10 to 12 years
This is the best-case average performance with media stored under controlled conditions. The lifetime degrades if the media are stored under ordinary use conditions, which includes being transported, exposed to extreme temperatures and handled.
Data stored optically are typically rotated onto fresh media every 5 years and that stored on magnetic tape every 10 to 15 years.
These storage methods have inadequate lifetimes because of competing market needs. Low-cost and high-speed compromise the physical mechanisms employed to store data. These compromises limit the amount of energy used to record information.
A physical state (a data bit in a flash memory, a magnetic domain on a hard disc, or a phase change in the organic dyes on a CD-R disc) written with a very small amount of energy is thermodynamically unstable. Over a period of a few years, these states will all degenerate until the data is lost. The energy threshold to write or to corrupt data is actually quite small.
Once data has been written to disc, the data is usable in an ‘all or nothing’ state. As the media ages, it eventually reaches a point where it becomes unreadable. There is no reliable indicator of the remaining life of the media in storage and no warning to the user once the end is near. When failure occurs, all data is lost unless a second copy exists in a readable condition. The loss to the user, not only in terms of replacement cost, but also in the potentially permanent loss of data, is substantial.
The response by industry and government is to duplicate and periodically ‘migrate’ data onto fresh media, which is very expensive in terms of the equipment required, time consumed and management overhead.
Data is secured for the short-term but the problem grows exponentially when old data is combined with new data and needs to be duplicated, periodically migrated and maintained.
An even bigger problem exists for the storage of historical information and personal data. There presently exists no way to permanently preserve such things as digital photos, e-mail, computerized family histories, and other highly valuable historical artifacts that document the personal and civic history of our nation, the world and the family.
Outside of a few special archives such as the Library of Congress, if the document is digital, it is ephemeral (short-lived).
There is one potential method of storing digital data for many centuries — the stamped, or mass-produced, CD or DVD. These are made by a substantially different method than recordable CDs or DVDs and have been found in accelerated lifetime testing to have life spans extending multiple centuries.
However, the manufacturing process for such a disc is prohibitively expensive in quantities of just one or two, as well as very time-intensive per gigabyte of data saved. It is not possible to justify the huge expense of making a stamped CD or DVD to preserve such a small amount of digital information per disc for future business or individual needs.
As we continue to move toward ubiquitous digitization, the need to solve this problem is becoming more and more urgent as the amount of information that government, healthcare organizations, businesses, entertainment and institutions are legally, morally and ethically obligated to preserve grows exponentially.
About Millennial DiscTM Technology
The core patent pending technology, exclusively licensed to Millenniata, Inc., is to use focused energy (such as a laser beam) to alter an optical disc (made of different but well-known materials) in such a way that the data recorded is permanent.
An example of what this could look like is in the figure below. Additionally, the optical disc will be readable in any standard reader (CD or DVD). Only the disc and the writer will be new.
None of the materials or processes used to produce the Millennial DiscTM or its writer are new. However, the combination of these materials and processes by which the disc is made, is unique.
According to the Storage Networking Industry Association’s 100 Year Archive Task Force, 80% of businesses require an archiving solution longer than 50 years (i.e., the best performance of magnetic tape).
Archiving mandated or mission-critical information is a costly and time-consuming reality for businesses, institutions and governments.
Millenniata will be the first to provide a cost-effective and permanent solution for archiving and storing any type of data. At the same time, it will provide backwards compatible readability and fit neatly into existing digitizing, archiving, encryption and cataloging flows.
Collectively, the Millenniata team has spent years researching customer needs for digital archiving.
Customers who will benefit immediately from the use of the Millennial DiscTM are those in government agencies, medical and religious institutions, insurance and entertainment industries, data storage service providers, genealogical organizations, and large and small businesses.
In addition, Millenniata’s long-term vision includes licensing its technology in order to enter the mass consumer markets.
Years of research and the latest technology form a solid foundation for Millenniata and the Millennial DiscTM. Our company founders are scientists and college professors.
In this section of our site, once they are available, we will include articles that delve further into the digital storage realm, all authored by our team members.