Blu-ray Archiving

Blu-ray archiving

The debate as to whether Blu-ray is suitable as an archiving medium is very easy to resolve. Blu-ray is the media replacement for DVD which has been used for archiving information for the past 15 years. Blu-ray uses Phase Change technology for writing. Optical Phase Change technology is used to create "In Phase" or "Out of Phase" bits on a special media for phase change writing. The drive uses a laser of different power levels or laser intensities to produce this effect. One power level allows the media to flow into a crystalline form while the other creates an "Out of Phase" condition. The crystallized areas reflect the read Lasers beam with a different coefficient of reflectivity than the non-crystallized areas. Thus, data can be read from the disk. DVD's use a dye based technology for recording which is etched when the laser burns the "data pits" and although reliable the technology is subject to temperature changes and fades overtime due to light.

Once a Blu-ray disk is written it is permanent and likely to last far longer than any CD or DVD due to the media structure. In addition to this a Blu-ray disc is coated with an extremely hard coating, please view these You Tube post for evidence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5jEbZt6AIQ

Read the Blu-ray archiving analysis from Panasonic

http://panasonic.net/pavc/blu-ray_disc/archive.html

We have sold Blu-ray archiving solutions to the following organisations:

Blu-ray technology is also licensed by over 180 worldwide organisations, so media and drives will be available in 10-15 years.

A Blu-ray jukebox is the Greenest form of digital storage technology as drives only spin up when data needs to be read or written. Hard disks on the other hand are prone to failure.

The access time to find data on a Blu-ray disk is 200ms compared to 2-3 minutes using tape and 5-10ms using hard disk.

Summary

Given the choice of currently available storage technologies Blu-ray makes a very compelling case as a "True Archiving" technology and as such should be seriously considered when choosing a technology where permanence and access are key criteria.