M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.and available as DVD and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

discs.

Overview

M-DISC's design is intended to provide archival media longevity.M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last 1000 years.The M-DISC DVD looks like a standard disc, except it is slightly thicker and almost transparent. The patents protecting the M-DISC technology assert that the data layer is a glassy carbon and that the material is substantially inert to

oxidation Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is the gain of electrons or ...

and has a

melting point The melting point (or, rarely, liquefaction point) of a substance is the temperature at which it changes state from solid to liquid. At the melting point the solid and liquid phase exist in equilibrium. The melting point of a substance depen ...

of . M-Discs are readable by most regular disc drives.

History

M-DISC developer Millenniata, Inc. was co-founded by

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-d ...

professors Barry Lunt, Matthew Linford,

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Henry O'Connell and CTO Doug Hansen. The company was incorporated on May 13, 2010, in

American Fork, Utah American Fork is a city in north-central Utah County, Utah, United States, at the foot of Mount Timpanogos in the Wasatch Range, north from Utah Lake. This city is thirty-two miles southeast of Salt Lake City. It is part of the Provo– ...

."Springville company introduces new DVD to protect data for a thousand years or more"
' Daily Herald. Retrieved 17 July 2009. Millenniata, Inc. officially went bankrupt in December 2016. Under the direction of CEO Paul Brockbank, Millenniata had issued convertible debt. When the obligation for conversion was not satisfied, the company defaulted on the debt payment and the debt holders took possession of all of the company's assets. The debt holders subsequently started a new company, Yours.co, to sell M-DISCs and related services.

Durability claims

According to an

accelerated aging Accelerated aging is testing that uses aggravated conditions of heat, humidity, oxygen, sunlight, vibration, etc. to speed up the normal aging processes of items. It is used to help determine the long-term effects of expected levels of stress wit ...

test of the French National Laboratory of Metrology and Testing in 2012, at and 85% humidity, the DVD+Rs with inorganic recording layer like M-DISCs were still readable after 250 hours (equivalent of 62.5 years to 86.8 years time) with an acceptable read/error rate, and were rated "less than 250 hours" equivalent to competing offers. The performance was better than several DVD brands using organic dyes, where discs were not always readable after 250 hours; slightly lower than another brand which achieved a lower read/error rate and was rated "250 hours"; much less than glass DVD technology, which was rated by "more than 1000 hours".

Commercial support

Recorded discs are readable in most conventional drives. Available recording capacities are similar to other optical media from 4.7 GB

DVD-R DVD recordable and DVD rewritable are optical disc recording technologies. Both terms describe DVD optical discs that can be written to by a DVD recorder, whereas only 'rewritable' discs are able to erase and rewrite data. Data is written ('bu ...

to 25 GB, 50 GB

BD-R Blu-ray Disc Recordable (BD-R) refers to two direct to disc optical disc recording technologies that can be recorded on to a Blu-ray-based optical disc with an optical disc recorder. BD-R discs can be written to once, whereas Blu-ray Disc Recorda ...

and 100 GB BD-XL. With the first DVD M-DISCs, it was difficult to determine which was the writable side of the disc, so coloring similar to that on standard DVD discs was added to later discs to help distinguish the sides. Asus,

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered ...

Lite-On Lite-On (also known as LiteOn and LiteON) is a Taiwanese company that primarily manufactures consumer electronics, including LEDs, semiconductors, computer chassis, monitors, motherboards, optical disc drives, and other electronic components ...

, Pioneer, and

Verbatim Verbatim means word for word. Verbatim may also refer to: * Verbatim (brand), a brand of storage media and flash memory * Verbatim (horse), an American racehorse * ''Verbatim'' (magazine), edited by Erin McKean * Verbatim theatre Documentary th ...

produce drives that can record M-DISC media.

Ritek RITEK Corporation manufactures optical discs such as CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, HD DVD, Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray M-Disc, storage cards such as CF (CompactFlash) cards, SD cards and MMC cards (MultiMediaCard), memory s ...

produces M-DISC Blu-ray media, sold under the Ritek and M-DISC brands. Verbatim produces co-branded discs, marketed as the "Verbatim M-DISC".

M-Disc Alternatives

There are several, more commonly used alternatives to the M-Disc, such as

hard disk drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magn ...

, and solid state drives. File:M-disc-03.jpg, alt=M-DISC optical storage medium transparency demonstration, M-DISC optical storage medium transparency demonstration File:M-disc-02.jpg, alt=M-DISC medium in an open case, M-DISC medium in an open case File:LG WH14NS40.jpg, alt=The M-DISC "swirl" logo on an LG Blu-ray optical drive, The M-DISC "swirl" logo on an LG

optical drive

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.mdisc.com/ Audiovisual introductions in 2009 Blu-ray Disc Digital media DVD Rotating disc computer storage media Optical computer storage media