New DVDs claim 1,000-year life span

While some DVDs can only be relied on for as little as two years, a start-up company called Cranberry says its DVDs last an entire millennium.

The Cranberry DiamonDisc has no adhesive, reflective or dye layers, which the company says can contribute to “data rot.” Cranberry claims that the National Archives are looking into storing information on DiamonDiscs, and repeatedly points to a National Archives Web page that says an average DVD’s life span is 2 to 5 years, even when published life expectancies say 10 to 25 years, or longer.

Gold DVDs, such as the one Kodak introduced in 2006, can last 80 to 300 years, but the DiamonDisc is made of a transparent, “diamond-hard” material that is supposedly superior. Obviously, that hasn’t been tested, but Cranberry says international standards are used for the estimate, including exposure to extreme temperatures and light. The DiamonDisc can withstand 176-degree Fahrenheit temperatures and direct exposure to all spectra of light.

The catch? You can’t burn a DiamonDisc yourself. Instead, you send up to 4.7 GB of photos, music or other data to Cranberry through an online uploader or by mail, and the company mails a disc back to you. Each disc costs $35, though two or more discs are priced at $30 each. If you absolutely must handle the operation on your own, a burner and spool of 150 discs are available for $5,000. The discs are readable in any DVD player.

There’s one other potential snag to consider: In 1,000 years, or even 100 years, a DVD reader might be really, really hard to find. I can see this kind of storage coming in handy for the National Archives, which ensure the means to read these discs for years to come. But the average person who wants to preserve family photos can probably bet that gold discs will suffice until a newer, better method of permanent storage comes along.