Utah-based Millenniata announced it will offer Blu-ray M-DISCs in the second quarter of 2013, increasing both the storage capacity and the accessibility of the DVD M-DISC. The technology guarantee data loss prevention by laser etching data (files, photos, videos, etc.) into an inorganic rock-like material that is not available from any other recordable media.

While DVDs and Blu-ray Discs are a popular archiving format for consumers, the discs can actually become unreliable overtime. The effects of lights, humidity and chemical change inside the disc structure means that the data on discs can eventually become unreadable.

"Most discs use an optical dye to record data, which mean the dye changes color a little bit and that change is then read back to get your data back, and that works for five years or so [...] Over longer periods of times it starts to become suspect and eventually will fail. We record data by actually melting and moving material around, so you get a hard mark, a bit more like having written in stone," said Douglas Hansen, the company CTO, to The IDG News Service.

A recent study performed by the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, California, tested five brands of archival-quality DVD discs, including the Millenniata M-DISC for data longevity and reliability. The test found that M-DISC was the only solution that suffered no degradation or data loss under the harsh testing environments. All other discs tested failed.

The new Blu-ray M-DISCs will be writable and readable on any Blu-ray combo drive - a big step for Millenniata and the convenience of this permanent storage technology. Currently, only M-DISC compatible drives can write to the DVD version of M-DISC, but it can be read in any DVD drive. Millenniata partner LG Electronics offers an affordable M-Ready optical drive.

Also announced is a marketing and distribution partnership with Imation, the leading world-wide distributor of data storage products. They co-brand and distribute both the M-DISC and Blu-ray M-DISC under Imation?s TDK, Memorex and Imation brands.

Story filed 14.01.13