New Pioneer Blu-ray discs are guaranteed to last at least 100 years

midian182

Posts: 9,662   +121
Staff member
In a nutshell: There are justifiable concerns about the longevity of digitally stored data, especially in Japan, where certain tax-related information must be preserved for 100 years. It's led to manufacturer Pioneer developing Blu-ray discs that are guaranteed to store data for at least a century.

As reported by PC Watch (via Tom's Hardware), Japan's Electronic Books Preservation Act requires certain tax data to be stored electronically for 100 years. That's a problem for long-term digital storage formats such as NAND flash, hard drives, tape, and optical discs, which wouldn't last a century.

Pioneer has offered an answer to this problem in the form of the BDR-WX01DM, a USB 3.0 (Type-A) Blu-ray optical drive, and 25GB BD-R discs called IPS-BD11J03P. Both carry the 'DM for Archive' label and meet the Japanese government's JIS X6257 quality standard for guaranteed longevity.

The drive uses reliable motors, durable mechanical systems, and a dust shield structure. It's also compatible with glassy carbon-based M-disc media that's designed to last 1,000 years. That all goes some way toward explaining the $400 (without tax) price.

The discs are also more expensive than your standard Blu-rays, priced at around $16 for a pack of three. However, users will have to pay extra costs to store the discs in special environments with temperature and humidity controls. It's also recommended that the discs be kept in buildings with fire, earthquake, and flood protection if you really want to help ensure they survive for at least a century. Given that these products are designed for enterprise and government customers, the high costs and maintenance requirements are unlikely to be big issues.

Back in 2019, Warner Bros. and Microsoft collaborated on a proof of concept test for Project Silica, a Microsoft Research project that used laser optics and AI to store data in quartz glass. It resulted in the entire Superman (1978) movie being stored on a piece of 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2 mm glass that should last for thousands of years.

Permalink to story.

 
Blu-ray disc predicament is in capacity, not longevity. Once they failed to make them usable for 8K content, it's been heading toward obsolescence since.

This update is as interesting as another Tesla do 0-60 under 1s, to turn your guts out.
 
How does this guarantee work?

Is it something like that in 75 years, the original purchaser, only, if still alive, can request a refund from Pioneer's optical storage business unit, if still in business, as the same legal entity, to receive either the original purchase price (I.e., worthless in current value after 75 years of inflation), or a free replacement (also worthless as regards to the original purpose of storing content.)

Edit: and of course original proof of purchase required.
 
Last edited:
I dont need something to last 100 years. But I would take slightly more expensive than normal HDD of 10tb.
 
How does this guarantee work?

Is it something like that in 75 years, the original purchaser, only, if still alive, can request a refund from Pioneer's optical storage business unit, if still in business, as the same legal entity, to receive either the original purchase price (I.e., worthless in current value after 75 years of inflation), or a free replacement (also worthless as regards to the original purpose of storing content.)

Edit: and of course original proof of purchase required.
You do not need to return it the last day of the warranty. This just means that it has lifetime warranty and once buy it it will work basically until needed. I use Blu-ray to backup photos to one more location for example.
 
I don't get it. Any outfit which deals in a lot of data and cares about protecting it will not only have backups but will also upgrade their live data storage systems at least every ten years. No serious data storage solution is going to be relied on for longer than that. In my view, the ideal scheme is a local backup on-site and a redundant remote backup, either in someone's cloud or on your own system at a distant location. For maximum security make sure that all backups are encrypted and no single person is given unfettered access to both copies.
 
I remember when they said CDs will last for 500 years. And then they would stop functioning after 5 years. So we can expect these BluRays made to last for 100 years to stop working after 12 months?
 
I remember when they said CDs will last for 500 years. And then they would stop functioning after 5 years. So we can expect these BluRays made to last for 100 years to stop working after 12 months?

I have some floppies from 1982, and they still work. So, it depends :-D
 
Sensible. I mean, it's not, but given the "100 year retention" rule it makes more sense to make special (or at least specially guaranteed) bluray disks and a special long-life bluray drive, than to continue trying to use floppies as the previous plan in Japan was.
 
Back