Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc format

Re:Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc format by jzwinck on Monday March 10, 2014 @08:48AM (#7372595)

So little demand for Blu-ray is there that Panasonic's own archival storage device reached End Of Life four years after its launch in 2007. That one was called PowerFile [1].

The idea was pretty good, the industrial design was lackluster but serviceable. But the longevity of the discs was questionable (especially if you took advantage of the ability to remove the spindles holding them), and the devices themselves were abruptly pulled from the market around 2011.

The drives inside were actually laptop drives--the kind you used to slide into your laptop before you had a MacBook. I doubt they would last very long, but we didn't really get to find out, because once new units were no longer being sold we had to abandon the system.

So, do not buy this thing for long-term storage, because one of its main backers already proved they do not have what it takes to service this market.

[1] http://www.kintronics.com/powerfile/prodSubIntro.html

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Re:Sony and Panasonic announce the Archival Disc format by hga on Monday March 10, 2014 @09:54AM (#7372876)

Very good point. I in general no longer trust Sony as a corporation, although I haven't heard any horror stories about their backup products. That Matsushita, ah, I'd forgotten they renamed themselves Panasonic in 2008, would pull such a stunt ... nope, not going to trust this stuff for a decade. Will stick to LTO tape and Taiyo Yuden CD-Rs.

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