"Archival Disc" standard formulated for professional-use next-generation optical disc

Just heard Sony and Panasonic announced the "Archival Disc" format and will be shipping units next year, in short, it is designed for archival purposes, withstanding several environmental conditions (humidity/temperature/dust/water), and ranging from 300GB to 1TB (eventually) of space in optical format.

Announcement:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201403/14-0310E/

It describes the format as robust media for long-term storage of content.

What do you think about this? Do you think it will be actually useful for archival purposes? It does not specify anything about estimated longevity/decay though.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

 

Nice, never heard of it before. Very interesting.

 

I think that only things that can keep data for thousands of years are low-density stainless steel (or some durable alloy) punch cards or some holographic recording technology that uses scratch resistant glass.

For those Archival Disc/M-disc standards nobody knows how it will be in reality. Like 100 years of promised life of CDs, i have some music CDs bought in early 80s in USSR, perfectly playable. And have some discs that died within a year. For example one of two copies of Metroid Prime for GC just died without any reason - no scratches, no visible disc rot, no cracks or something. It was just standing on the shelf for 2 years, i decided to sell it and bam - GC doesn't recognize the disc, tried another GC - nothing, Wii - nothing, tried cleaning - nothing, and it's not a copy protection ring. lens just can't focus at all.

 

with each scratch and you could potentially lose 10-100+ GB of data, nah
also how long would it take to burn a disc, bit annoying if it fails at 99% with a buffer error or something similar

 

I think it's a very good initiative. We currently have very few long term digital storage solutions. Most mediums will deteriorate within a relatively short period of time (IE, a couple of decades). A long-term storage medium that's designed to resist harsh environments would be very useful. Remember that such a disc could be housed in an outer shell too, it doesn't need to be directly exposed, so if surface damage was an issue, just enclose it like magnetic storage always was.