We are all well aware digital storage has been moving away from disc long enough for us to say “USB”, “storage drive”, “MP3”, “iTunes”, and even “Pandora”. What about cloud storage? Well, most of everything is there, such as optical media, video games, and documents. Almost anything you need stored, is stored. So what? Well, with a pun intended, more is in store for us. Both Sony and Panasonic made an announcement last year revolving plans to develop a brand new, high-capacity optical storage disc. With the new Archival Disc, storage capacities of up to 1 Terabyte (TB) could be possible. Interesting news, isn’t it? At a time when we think everything is cloud, software and hardware; just mentioning of the word “Compact Disc” seems obsolete, doesn’t it?

What Sony and Panasonic have been working on is a new standard that could enable long-term storage of even larger amounts of data. The project, dubbed Archival Disc, is the duos next-generation 300 GB optical disc is for the future of gaming. The Archival Disc, has the same dimensions as Blu-ray discs today, but readable for at least fifty entire years. Looking internally, the disc has double-sided technology, with three layers; expanding initial capacity to something like 500 GB, then even 1TB soon after. This may all happen come summer 2015.

Optical discs have perks. Their advantage over higher capacities are going to be achieved through signal-processing technologies like multi-level recording. This is supposed to be primarily targeted at “professionals”. They can be stored for long periods, maintaining their readability. They also don’t need special storage environments with constant temperature or humidity. Such attribute may be a side note, but, none-the-less not worrying about it being left in your car is always nice. By the way, are you one of those people who have information or old photos that you’d rather be surely accessible for years to come? You're not the only one. Isn’t that why we have those USBs, hard drives, etc? What if the ol’ compact disc sounds more like your personality? I know, in our day and age, even having something stored on a CD seems irrelevant. Perhaps that is the sole reason Sony and Panasonic teamed up to deliver such an option! It’s an option with perks!

In Sony’s announcement: “In recent times, demand for archival capacities has increased significantly in the film industry, as well as in cloud data centers that handle big data, where advances in network services have caused data volumes to soar.” Further, “The two companies plan to actively promote this next-generation high-capacity optical disc standard in the professional field in order to offer an effective solution for protecting valuable data into the future”.