storage – FTI

How National Archives are Going Digital

Paper was one of the humanity’s earliest means of data storage. Since its invention in China almost two thousand years ago, it is still one of the most important materials that we use in our daily activities: it is used as means of payment in form of cash, many important documents are still signed on paper, paper books are still more popular than the electronic ones and at the end of the day, don’t you still scribble your notes on the business meetings in a paper notebook?

Civilization used paper for centuries (and it will likely continue to do so for several more): our ancestors managed to leave us hundreds of thousands historical documents and books. From these sources, we are able to get the valuable information about important historical events and the way our ancestors lived. Paper allows us to see the footprint that previous generations have left in the history. It is a truly unique invention, as important and significant as the use of fire, iron and the wheel.

Nonetheless its undisputed value and role in the history of the mankind, paper have its weak side: it is not able to resist the influence of the environment. Old paper documents may corrode and the information recorded may gradually fade away and disappear over long periods of time. Before the invention of the first printing presses in XVth century, old manuscripts were copied manually in handwriting. Despite the complexity of that process, people understood the importance of preserving the information for future generations and some even dedicated a lifetime to restore the old manuscripts for the future generations.

Nowadays the technical progress allows us to archive the information in a more safe and simplified way: through digitalization and electronic archiving.

The Telangana State Archives and Research Institute of Hyderabad, India has come up with a proposal for a digital library placing online all its documents that include ‘farmans’ and gazettes issued by erstwhile rulers and also a rich collection of manuscripts. The proposal has already been submitted to the State government for approval.

Once in place, the digital library will come as a boon for researchers, teachers, and students apart from the general public who at present have to go through a cumbersome manual process to check the material of their interest.

“Now, whenever a researcher or student approaches us, we take their request and locate the papers and hand them over. With the proposed system, students coming for research can view the information on computers connected to the server,” said a senior official.

The process has already been initiated and the institute has digitized more than 60 folios which are to be made available to the public through the digital library. The digitized content includes ‘farmans’, gazettes and manuscripts that were issued at different points of time by the then rulers. The impressive collection at the State Archives and Research Institute has thousands of documents related to the Moghal rule while the oldest document preserved here dates back to the year 1406 pertaining to Adil Shah.

Every year, researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Singapore among other countries visit the Institute for research.

Digital archiving has an important role in historical data preservation: as paper manuscripts and important historical documents are decaying under the influence of temperature, pressure and humidity fluctuations, there is always a risk of data loss. Therefore, digitalization becomes a must, rather than an option.

Just think about it: if the medieval monks would not copy the manuscripts back in the day, we would probably never know about some of the major historical events and scientific discoveries.

We at Falcon Technologies International understand the importance of historical data preservation. It is hard to underestimate the importance of these materials in the context of the history of the civilization. That was one of the ideas behind the development of FalconMEDIA Century Archival Disc – an optical media storage device, that is able to store data for centuries. Manufactured with use of gold and platinum layers technology, it is able to serve as a reliable and secure long-term data vault.

Source: Telangana Today

Next Generation of Optical Media is coming with the Archival Disc

Next generation of the optical disc is announced to be launched in the nearest future. The maximum data storage capacity on a single optical disc that is available on the market now is up to 500 GB, and the new format is going to be able to store twice of that.

The discs are called ‘Archival disc’ and it is claimed that the storage unit can retain its data for more than a 100 years.

Higher capacities in optical storage are made possible due to smaller sized pits and marks and shorter wavelength lasers and improved drawing rates. In the case of the ‘Archival Discs’ alternative approach is used: extra data is recorded on the land areas between grooves that are traditionally unused.

Optical discs have great potential to further enhance their recording density and storage capacity with technological advancements in, for example, signal processing technology. If we compare the growth in the recording density of HDDs, optical discs, and magnetic tapes, in 10 years, from 2016 to 2026, the recording density will improve by 7~15% for HDDs and 30~46% for optical discs. For the magnetic tapes, the increase is estimated to be less than 30%. To estimate the longevity of the media, industry standard acceleration tests were conducted. Error occurrence rates were measured in temperatures 30℃ and above and in less than 70% humidity. These tests estimate that the prototypes of the Archive Discs can reliably store data for more than 100 years. On the other hand, hard disks have a lifespan of a few years, and magnetic tapes a dozen or so years.

Because optical discs have a long life, unlike hard disks and magnetic tapes, there is no need to regularly migrate data from degraded media to new media. Moreover, optical discs do not require operations or cooling of facilities that are associated with hard disks, therefore, long-term storing of data on optical discs can reduce power consumed as well as costs incurred. If 1PB (petabyte) of data is stored for 20 years on HDDs, magnetic tapes, and optical discs, with widely available HDDs and magnetic tapes, the costs come out to be around the same, whereas with optical discs, it is estimated that the data could be stored at half the cost.

Another technology used on the Archival Discs is,”Crosstalk-cancelling technology”. This technology cancels crosstalk noise generated by adjacent tracks. This should ensure playback quality without read errors, even with narrow track pitches.

Falcon Technologies International is constantly monitoring the overall trends of the optical media market and tends to allocate its resources towards innovation and improvement of its professional product lines, in particular, the Century Archival, which is a cutting-edge technology, built with Gold or Platinum layer to ensure maximum security, longevity and protection for stored data proven by a number of internal and independent third-party tests.

Source: guru3d

Meet all new 9.5-mm Optical Disc Drive by Silverstone

SilverStone has introduced its first ultra-slim ODD that can read and record CD, DVD, Blu-ray and BDXL media. The drive is not a technological breakthrough, but it is going to be one of a few 9.5-mm BD/BDXL-supporting ODDs on the market. The manufacturer is primarily known for its cases, PSUs and coolers, so the launch of the TOB03 ODD demonstrates that the company sees demand for such products.

Nowadays the vast majority of audiovisual content (games, music, movies, etc.) is distributed digitally via services like iTunes, Netflix, Origin and Steam. Partially due to this reason, a number of ODD makers and optical media manufacturers reduced production levels and focused on other markets. However, a lot of people still own large collections of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs which need something to access the media. Moreover, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats still offer the highest quality 1080p and 4K movies due to massive bitrates that streaming or digital download services do not offer, due to network restrictions for most. As a result, while demand for ODDs, in general, is not high, it exists and there are people willing to pay for such drives.

From SilverStone’s point of view, these are people who buy its SFF PC cases, SFX PSUs and coolers for home theater PCs and then go to other suppliers for optical drives. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense for SilverStone to offer its customers premium ODDs in addition to what it already sells them.

However, there is a problem. While SilverStone makes various products in-house, producing optical drives is not what it does and sourcing lasers, motors and other ODD components is sometimes tricky in a world where only a few companies produce them. Therefore, SilverStone had to find an OEM to manufacture the hardware.

Apparently, there are only two companies on the planet that make 9.5-mm Blu-ray/BDXL burners: one is LG and another is Panasonic. The latter is the maker of the TOB03 and this is something that SilverStone does not seem to hide: the official photos of the drive clearly reflect that this is indeed the Panasonic/Matshita UJ272. The drive has been around for a while, but given the relatively slow evolution of ODDs in general, this is hardly a problem. Moreover, when it comes to availability of ultra-slim BD/BDXL burners, the more the merrier as right now their choice and supply are very limited. SilverStone’s offering does not expand the former, but it clearly boosts the supply by making the drive available from the company’s usual channels.

The SilverStone TOB03 (aka Panasonic UJ272) uses the SATA 3.0 interface (with a Slimline SATA connector) and can read and record CD (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, HS-RW, US-RW), DVD (DVD, DVD±R, DVD±R DL, DVD±RW, DVD-RAM) and Blu-ray (BD, BD-R SL/DL/TL/QL, BD-RE SL/DL/TL) discs. The drive has a 2 MB buffer underrun protection (which is lower compared to other high-end ODDs) and supports 6x CAV burning speed for popular BD-R SL/DL (25 GB/50 GB) media as well as 4x PCAV burning speed for BR-R TL/QL (100 GB/128 GB) discs. As for supported Blu-ray formats, both SilverStone and Panasonic declare Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D, but not UHD Blu-ray (at least for now). Since SilverStone’s TOB03 comes in retail packaging only, the ODD always comes with a 12.7 mm bezel to be compatible with cases that support slim drives as well as a slimline SATA adapter featuring a flexible braided cable for easier installation (which contrasts to OEM drives from renowned makers that come without any cables in some regions).

SilverStone’s TOB03 ODD burner will be available from the company’s partners in the coming weeks. The company does not disclose anything about pricing, but since Panasonic’s UJ272 is available for $70 to $90 depending on the retailer, expect the TOB03 to be priced in the same ballpark.

Source: AnandTech

The future of archiving

We all know content is king but just as important is the need to prepare, protect and preserve the content through viable and long lasting solutions.

Within the video production industry alone, data-heavy content such as HD, 4K and high frame rate videos are exponentially growing by the day. Subsequently, these newly created assets need to be managed effectively, stored safely, and utilised along with the old assets.

Broadcasters, production companies, and other content holders are not only handling large and growing quantities of daily content, but are also much concerned with digitising the massive VTR assets currently sitting on shelves. As it becomes increasingly possible to effectively manage and rapidly search these materials via shared networks, new potential is discovered for the reuse of such assets.

As data volumes rise, so do storage costs – making it essential to implement storage systems that distinguish between hot (frequently accessed), warm (occasionally accessed), and cold (infrequently accessed) data, and se-lecting the best storage media for each. The main obstacle for content owners is to ensure the ability to preserve, access, and re-use their valuable assets without incurring repeated investment, and huge running costs.

The requirements of long term reliability, the ability to maintain large quantities of data at relatively low costs, and the ability to maintain data integrity in “green environments” with limited environmental controls are essential.

Sony is convinced that optical disc storage fills all of these requirements, and is therefore ideal for warm and cold storage. The new technology, with open and non-proprietary formats, involves the use of multiple bare discs contained within a robust cartridge and a dedicated disc drive unit with an associated software driver able to manipulate the discs individually – providing a seamless read/write capability.

The non-contact read/write technology offers the ability to access data with remarkable speed compared to tape data that necessitates the physical fast-forwarding and rewinding of a tape, 800 metres or more in length, until the location of the required data is reached. Also, it’s never going to jam, tangle or snap.

The fact remains that optical discs are considerably more durable than hard-disk storage systems or magnetic tape based media, with a 100-year shelf life expectancy. The system is highly reliable and optimised for long-term archiving. It also succeeds in keeping down total archiving costs, and has a low environmental footprint. It offers accessibility, high speed, and can be scalable to fit the users’ needs which can begin with small archive stored on a few shelves, and expand into a large library as data accumulates.

Whilst the professional AV media industry has moved steadily from its tape based origins toward file based workflows for acquisition, post-production and distribution, the archive domain continues to remain largely tape-based. An alternative modern day solution, the Optical Disc Archive (ODA), has been created helping organisations achieve safe, long-term storage of video, photos, text, and other important digital assets.

Both LTO magnetic tape and Optical Disc Archive are viable cold storage options. The most common complaint from the user community is the constant need to migrate valuable assets from one form of tape media to the next version upgrade simply to maintain a viable archive. This requirement for copy migration every two generations (approximately five to six years), incurs substantial media and labour costs.

By leveraging the proving optical technologies, and inter-generational compatibility of optical discs, ODA technology can store important data safely, eliminating the need for migration every few years. This eliminates the need for media, hardware and software re-investment, as well as the cost of human resources required to perform copying work, resulting in reduced total cost of ownership.

ODA solutions are also ideal for deep archive, whereas data tape does not provide the assurance or meet the need for very long-term archive requirements. It also provides a second copy broadcast archive solution at a remote site and is suitable for business continuity, disaster recovery, post house and production back-up and, for video, film and stock footage archives or AV national archives. The system can also be used for news and sports clips that need to be near-online and as an on-line browse and proxy clip store.

Recently, Sony unveiled the second generation of its Optical Disc Archive System, which doubles the capacity of a single cartridge, and doubling read/write speeds over the previous generation, accommodating 4K video in real time, and maintains backwards read compatibility with first generation optical disc drives.

Optical disc archive can serve as the core of highly productive archive systems capable of managing and storing valuable, high-volume data—including 4K video, future-generation video, older video assets, and multimedia video content.

The technology is future proof and achieves a revolutionary jump in the world of data storage ideal for any circumstance.

Now and in future, this system delivers an efficient, secure, and reliable archive solution. Unlike data tape technology, where you have to migrate your content or you can’t access it as your technology moves on, the Optical Disc Archive media written today, will be readable by the drives of tomorrow.

Bottom line is with the current region pre-dominantly tape based, it is now time to transition towards the future. Optical disc archiving is the way forward – it is a solution that is long term, economical, and ultimately scala-ble to grow with your business.

Written by Nabil El Madbak

Source: ScreenAfrica

From floppy disks to deep freeze: what’s the best way to store data?

A New York-based team of volunteer archivists and preservationists are working to transfer old VHS videotapes into digital formats. Volunteers meet weekly in a Tribeca loft filled with “racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vectorscopes and waveform monitors” to painstakingly digitize cassettes from the 1980s and 1990s. As they note, transferring video isn’t plug-and-go; much tweaking and troubleshooting can be required to get it right. That’s why they’ve only managed to transfer 155 tapes so far – a very small percentage of the total analog format archive.

The group partners with artists, activists, and individuals to lower the barriers to preserving at-risk audiovisual media – especially unseen, unheard, or archived works.

Whatever the content, once it’s digitized, it becomes publicly available via the Internet Archive.

And what about your own tapes? There are plenty of paid services that will help you to digitize old videotapes – or you can do it yourself using directions from open sources. And if you still have a big dusty box of your home video tapes stored somewhere deep in the closet, it may be a good idea to transfer their contents on the new storage mediums. In fact, we have already discussed that in one of our previous articles.

Tape manufacturers predicted 20 to 30 years of life expectancy, but media lifespan depends greatly on environmental conditions. Format obsolescence contributes to the crisis: Umatic and VHS tapes are no longer manufactured and BetaSP will soon be discontinued. Machines to play these formats are becoming more scarce as are the skills to maintain and repair them.

Of course, it’s not only the videotape that’s at risk. Entropy is relentless, and anything recorded on the old storage mediums will eventually have to be transferred and digitalized. Even if the medium remains intact, formats and interfaces become obsolete and disappear. Preserving data for the long term is a discipline worth more attention than we can give it here, but a few tips might be helpful.

Lifespan comparison of different backup storage media

Keep track of how long media is likely to last – but remember that the statistics are controversial projections, and many won’t be so precise. The general consensus is that consumer segment CD-Rs should last 30 to 50 years, DVD-Rs less than that, and CD-RWs and DVD-RWs even less. Similarly, tapes and hard disks can be expected to be readable for 10 to 30 years, while portable disks, USB thumb drives, and other solid-state storage devices may survive for half that time, maybe.

Back in 2005, The New York Times reported that 3.5” floppies have “an estimated life span of 10 years if stored in a cool, dry place with average care and use”. If you’ve still got any, we’ll bet they’re older than that!

With this in mind, regularly copy data to new media, especially if it’s approaching its expiration date. And make sure anything you haven’t saved is “in a cool, dry place,” not your attic or garage. It is strongly recommended to use a specialized archival optical media, like FalconMedia Century Archival, which are able to secure your data for up to 500 years.

Move away from physical formats that are becoming obsolete. For example, many people who used to back up their data on Zip drives, Syquest cartridges, and 1.44MB floppy drives no longer have access to these. Even interfaces can be an issue: external devices often used serial or parallel ports that no longer ship standard on computers (though desktop PC and ExpressCard laptop adapters can still be found). Make sure you’ve migrated your data before you dispose of an old device or format.

A common related issue: data trapped on a working hard disk in a dead PC or laptop. The Guardian serves up some useful guidance on installing the drive in an external USB enclosure and restoring from there.

Migrate data from obsolete programs, or at least make sure you have the tools to do so when necessary. Millions of people still have content trapped in ancient word processing. Tools for viewing such data or move it into “living” software include Quick View Plus and FastLook; for some formats, the free LibreOffice productivity suite or XNView image viewer might be all you need.

TechRepublic offers some useful high-level advice on planning a long-term strategy for protecting your data here.

All this is great as far as it goes, but as the amount of data we’re generating continues to soar, we’re likely to need some radically new. Here are some technologies that may potentially improve data storage in near future:

Analog micro-etching: The Long Now Foundation – which specializes in trying to envision the long-term future and solve the problems it might present – ran a full conference on super-long-term data storage. The solution it found promising enough to test: analog micro-etching onto nickel disks. Eight years later, they had a prototype: a disk containing information in about 1,500 human languages, plus translations of the Book of Genesis in each. Since the information is analog, it’s readable directly by humans (though they will need a microscope).

The Arctic World Archive: Officially opened on March 27 in Norway’s Svalbard Arctic region, the for-profit Arctic World Archive is already housing key documents from Brazil, Mexico, and Norway — safe, theoretically, from natural disaster and warfare. According to a report in The Verge, data is actually imprinted on special film, in huge high-density greyscale QR codes – and the archive is completely disconnected from the Internet to protect against hackers and ransomware.

DNA: According to Science Magazine, researchers have been making breathtaking progress since the first attempts to store data in DNA molecules back in 2012. DNA is ultracompact, and it can last hundreds of thousands of years if kept in a cool, dry place. And as long as human societies are reading and writing DNA, they will be able to decode it – not something you can say with confidence about videocassettes or QR codes.

Source: Naked Security

At the Dawn of the Computer Age: Memories of the “Informational Revolution” Pioneers.

Do you remember your very first computer? Pretty much everyone does; most of the people in their mid-30s, early-40s can still remember these noisy big white boxes with huge square screens and clicking dial-up modems that took ages to download a plain-text news article or even a basic e-mail with no attachments. Well, it took almost 40 years for the technology to get to that point, and there are still alive today witnesses to how it all started in the basements of the world famous universities and colleges.

Joyce Wheeler is someone who saw it all in those early days. She also can still remember her very first computer, and one of the reasons for that is because it was one of the first computers anyone used.

Dr. Joyce Wheeler was among the pioneers of programming

It was EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), a “proto-computer” that was assembled and served scientists at the University of Cambridge back in 1949. Joyce Wheeler was a member of the scientists group who were working on their PhD degree under the supervision of famous astronomer Fred Hoyle. They were researching the reactions inside stars, in particular the star lifecycle stages and their length.

In order to perform the research, Joyce needed some powerful calculating equipment, since the inner workings of the nuclear furnace that keep stars shining is a very complicated problem to solve with use of a human brain, pencil and a piece of paper. Mathematics capable of describing this level of nuclear energy processes is pretty formidable: Joyce remembers that she had to solve a nasty set of differential equations that describe their behavior and composition.

A copy of Edsac is being built at the National Museum of Computing

Completing these calculations manually would almost certainly result in errors, inaccurate data and ultimately could – and probably would – affect the research outcomes. And here is where she met EDSAC – a machine built by Professor Maurice Wilkes, a technical device the size of several average size bedrooms, that was there to do the kind of calculations that Ms. Wheeler needed to be done to complete her advanced degree.

The first challenge for young astrophysics student was to learn the sophisticated language that machine could understand. She was quite familiar with the machine itself, since it was showcased to her prior the start of her degree course in 1954. Being keen to get her research done accurately, Joyce sat down with an instructions booklet and worked her way through dozens of the programming exercises from that pioneering programming manual. That little book was called WWG (after the names of the authors: Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler and Stanley Gill).

The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac's creators — The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac’s creators

While learning the programming, Joyce (whose family name was Blacker at that time) got talking to David Wheeler, since one of her programs was helping to ensure that EDSAC was working well. They eventually got to know each other, fell in love and married in 1957.

Joyce remembers that exciting time in detail: she could not stop wondering what the machine could do for her work. She was able to study the programming quite fast due to her strong mathematical background: she became very quickly able to master the syntax into which she had to translate the endless complex equations.

At certain point of time she realized that programming is very similar to Maths in the sense that one can’t do it for too long.

“I found I could not work at a certain programming job for more than a certain number of hours per day,” Joyce Wheeler remembers. “After that you would not make much progress.”

Research students like Joyce Wheeler had to use Edsac at night

Sometimes the solution to some programming problems that worried her from time to time would come into her mind while she was doing some other things outside of the computer lab: like doing the laundry or having lunch.

“Sometimes it’s better to leave something alone, to pause, and that’s very true of programming.”

When the programming bit was finally done, Joyce Wheeler was allocated a timeslot to run her programs on the EDSAC: it was Friday night. She remembers that this period was perfect for her: there were no lectures the next day she had to attend.

As an operator she was granted the right to run the EDSAC alone, but she had to make sure that everything she did was recorded. A quite common occurence for all the early computers (and EDSAC was no exception) was unexpected crashes. Joyce remembers that only occasionally she was lucky enough to keep machine running all night, and if it did crash, there was little she was allowed to do to try to fix it. Even the cleaners were not allowed to get near EDSAC.

Dr. Wheeler showed Joyce one procedure, that allowed the recalibration of the EDSAC’s two kilobyte memory, but if that did not help, Joyce had no other choice but to stop her work for the night. But despite the regular crashes, she made steady progress on finding out how long different stars would last before they collapsed.

“I got some estimates of a star’s age, how long it was going to last,” she said. “One of the nice things was that with programming you could repeat it. Iterate. You could not do that with a hand calculation. We could add in sample numbers on programs and it could easily check them. I could check my results on the machine very rapidly, which was very useful.”

Now, you should understand that “rapidly” back in the 1950’s meant “not more than 30 minutes”. This is the time that EDSAC required to run a program. After that the results were printed out for the researcher to analyze them. After that you had to re-program and wait another couple of days to run another round of complex calculations. Despite all these delays, Ms. Wheeler felt that she was a part of something that would change the world.

“We were doing work that could not done in any other way,” she said. And even though EDSAC was crude and painfully slow by modern standards, she saw that a revolution had begun.

We at FTI never fail to get inspired by pioneering scientists like Dr. Wheeler, with their single-minded dedication and commitment to innovating new solutions to existing problems, often in lonely circumstances and running against the tide of conventional thinking, driving them to expand the frontiers of discovery and learning in ways that eventually become implemented into normal life for the entire global population. Innovation, research and patience are some of the core values we cherish at FTI, and no-one demonstrated these better than Dr Joyce Wheeler.

GITEX Technology Week in Dubai

In search for future technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness for business? Well, the 36th Gulf Information Technology Exhibition (Gitex) provided just that.

This 5 day event opened its doors from Sunday 16th October, 2016. It was the largest ICT exhibition in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, that took place at Dubai world trade centre. The event was inaugurated by Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council.

So, what was the Gitex technology exhibition all about? This event showed live demonstrations of future generation technology solutions from various government and international companies that can transform Middle East businesses. Key industry verticals of marketing, healthcare, finance, intelligent cities, retail, education and energy were discussed by industry leaders.

Over 200 investors and influential tech investment companies from Silicon Valley, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, including SoftBank Group International, 500 Startups, and many other venture partners arrived in Dubai to explore, evaluate and potentially fund start up businesses with talent. These ventures also included globally giant investors like Facebook, Dropbox and Spotify.

Key highlights included a large indoor VR activation powered by Samsung logo, Game-changing tech from 4,000 solution providers including AR, VR, AI, Wearables, Drones and more. GITEX Startup Movement examined the global startup movement featuring 350+ breakthrough startups from 52 countries. Customized networking programmes were also on offer for startups to discover how global contemporaries have been there, done that and created an impact.

In today’s era of technology, there is an ever increasing need for entrepreneurs to harness technologies that can enable companies to achieve efficiency and cost effectiveness. FTI has always believed that a strong culture of innovation, in all areas of the company, is an essential contributor to business success. FTI prioritize R&D and technology over cost, as we firmly believe that these functions are critical to ensure our products represent the best quality within the optical media industry.

In line with new innovation for business and services Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) showcased a smart streetlight system at GITEX 2016. According to Eng Maitha bin Adai, CEO of RTA’s traffic and roads agency, there are three systems showcased at Gitex this year and this combination of systems will help sustain green economy requirements by reducing carbon emissions. These systems include the Central Wireless Road Lighting Control System that sets multiple synchronized timetables for dimming streetlights. “A new feature in the smart lighting system is a tentative WiFi service installed in Dubai Water Canal at Sheikh Zayed Road.

RTA also displayed high-definition pedestrian detection camera systems with a twist. These new generation cameras produce pedestrian statistics in terms of number, sex, and age group.

Dubai Customs‘ Smart Virtual Agent initiative was also showcased at GITEX 2016. This venture represents a smart channel for communication with customers, which allows their queries about customs services, procedures and regulations to be answered more efficiently. Without the need for any physical employee the Smart Virtual Agent is an intelligent tool which operates 24/7. This cost effective measure helps efficiently redirect resources to other duties by reducing support cost. The self-improving platform utilizes Dubai Customs’ database and memory of similar cases to answer customer inquiries.

Many GITEX visitors had the opportunity to try out the Smart Inspection Glasses on display at the Dubai Customs stand. These tech heavy glasses facilitate containers’ field inspection, as customs inspectors can browse the customs declaration and x-ray images of the shipment simultaneously as well as its risk level. Inspectors can submit inspection reports using either the virtual keyboard or voice input feature.

Furthermore Dubai Customs showcased 8 happiness-led initiatives and innovations under the umbrella of Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation pavilion. Other innovations included the Authorized Economic Operator, Smart Inspection Lab, Smart Customs Route, Bags Smart Customs Inspection System and the Endangered Species Exhibition.

Five seminal trends have caught the eye at this Gitex event namely; Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), Biometrics, 3-D Printing, Mixed reality and drones. With artificial intelligence on the rise and the need for huge amounts of data to be stored, the progression and development of cloud storage is on the horizon. Cloud storage is a cloud computing model in which data is stored remotely on servers accessed from the World Wide Web, or “cloud.” Storage servers are built on virtualization techniques all maintained, managed, and backed-up online.

The technology world is increasingly realizing that Optical Digital Media is a safer way to store data compared to cloud technology solutions – this is evidenced by multiple data breaches where personal photographs and other information has been hacked and distributed to the public, and by the fact that Facebook has publicly stated that they have chosen to store their data with Optical Digital Media rather than cloud.

Falcon Technologies International (FTI) leads the way with regard to Optical Digital Media security and memory technology, and is conducting potentially ground-breaking research in this field with academic partners.

Data Archiving Architecture: Finding a Perfect Balance of Storage Mediums.

Data archiving has always been a challenge both for the enterprises and manufacturers of data storage solutions. The basic laws of thermodynamics tend to have the effect of deteriorating data storage capacity in the long run, so it is important to understand the needs of each individual data archiving project to be able to choose the right storage system based on the appropriate technology under the proper environmental conditions. That should be also combined with relevant migration and replication practices to improve the safety and accessibility for the extended periods of time.

The most common means of data archiving today are flash memory, hard disk drives, magnetic tape and optical discs. Data storage architects usually use one of these technologies, or their combinations, when designing their systems.

Let’s try and take a closer look at these technologies.

Flash memory got really popular in last 10 years.

First consider flash memory in archiving. At the 2013 Flash Memory Summit Jason Taylor from Facebook, in a keynote speech, presented the idea of using really low endurance flash memory for a cold storage archive. According to Marty Czekalski of Seagate at the MSST conference, flash writing is best done at elevated temperatures while data retention and data disturb favor storage at lower temperatures. The JEDEC JESD218A endurance specification states that if flash power-off temperature is at 25 degrees C then retention is 101 weeks—that isn’t quite 2 years. So it appears conventional flash memory may not have good media archive life and should only be used for storing transitory data.

HDD-based storage systems are good for so-called "hot" archives, where data needs to be easily accessible. — HDD-based storage systems are good for so-called “hot” archives, where data needs to be easily accessible.

Hard disk drives are often used in active archives because the various hard disk drive arrays can be continually connected to the storage network, allowing relatively rapid access to content. Hard disk drive active archives can also be combined with flash memory to provide better overall system performance. However hard disk drives do not last forever – they can wear out with continued use and even if the power is turned off the data in the hard disk drive will eventually decay due to thermal erasure (again we run into the enemy of data retention, thermodynamics).

In practice, hard disk drive arrays have built in redundancy and data scrubbing to help retain data for a long period. It is probably good advice to assume that HDDs in an active archive will last only 3-5 years and will need to be replaced over time.

Less active archives where data is stored for longer periods of time will be interested in storage media that can retain the information stored on them for an extended period of time. There are two common digital storage media that are used for long term cold storage applications – magnetic tape and optical discs.

Let’s look at these two storage technologies and compare them for long term cold storage applications.

Magnetic tape cartridge developed by IBM

Magnetic tapes used for archiving come in half-inch tape cartridges. The popular formats used to day are the LTO format supported by the Ultrium LTO Program, the T10000 series tapes from Oracle/ StorageTek and the TS series enterprise tapes from IBM. Modern magnetic tapes have a storage life under low temperature/humidity storage conditions and low usage of several decades and currently native storage capacities per cartridges as high as 8.5 TB.

When not actively being written or read, magnetic tape cartridges can sit in a library system consuming no power. Digital magnetic tape is thus a good candidate for long-term data retention and has a long history of use in many industries for this application.

Gold layer on Archival CDs/DVDs allows to store media for centuries

Optical storage has also been used for long-term data retention and environmental stress tests indicate that the latest generation of optical media should have an expected life-time of at least several decades. FalconMedia Century Archival discs are actually able to store data for hundreds of years, thanks to special gold and platinum reflective layers, that are used in their construction. At the Open Compute Project Summit in January 2014 Facebook, presented a 1 PB optical disc storage system prototype with 10,000 discs. When Facebook started the actual exploitation of the system it actually reduced company’s storage costs by 50% and the energy consumption by 80% compared to their previous HDD-based cold storage system.

Ken Wood from Hitachi Data Systems at the MSST Conference presented research results that proved hypothesis that the migration/remastering costs for 5 PB of content over 75 years is much less for an optical system with the media replaced every 50 years rather than more frequent tape and HDD replacement.

A lot of digital data has persistent value and so long term retention of that data is very important. In an Oracle talk at MSST they estimated that storage for archiving and retention is currently a $3B market, growing to over $7B by 2017. Several storage technologies can play a role in an archive system depending upon the level of activity expected in the archive. Flash memory can provide caching of frequently used or anticipated content to speed retrieval times while HDDs are often used for data that is relatively frequently accessed.

Magnetic tape and optical disks provide low cost, long-term inactive storage with additional latency for data access vs. HDDs due to the time to mount the media in a drive. Thus depending upon the access requirements for an archive it may be most effective to combine two or even three technologies to get the right balance of performance and storage costs. As the total content that we keep increases, these considerations will become more important to drive new generations of storage technologies geared toward protecting valuable content and bringing it to the future.

Do’s and Don’ts in Optical Media Data Archiving.

We all have some data or information that we want to preserve for as long a period of time as possible: whether it is family home videos or photo albums, precious memories of the past, or something that has the magical ability to recreate the best moments of our lives. As we wrote in one of our previous blog articles, many of us still have our old video archives stored on VHS tapes. When it comes to the photographs, it is very often the same story: how many of you still remembers Grandma’s old photo-albums with black and white photographs in them?

Old family photographs tend to fade out with time. Might be a good idea to store their digital copies.

In this article we will discuss a little more about the preservation of digital data using CDs and DVDs. We gathered some valuable guidelines from a number of sources including NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), other DVD and CD manufacturers and data archiving specialists.

The consensus of opinions, based on accelerated lifetime testing conducted by specialists worldwide, is that a high quality archival grade CDs and DVDs, if properly handled and stored, should preserve data for at least 100 years. Some professional grade optical media like FalconMedia Century Archival with gold and platinum layers even suggest a lifetime as long as 300-500 years before the data becomes unreadable.

Comparative lifespan of various data storage devices.

Of course, whether the hardware required to read a current CD or DVD will be around in 75 or 200 years is another matter. Most system today don’t have even the hardware to read 5.25″ floppy disks (which were common and popular 25 years ago). But in any case, the lifespan of optical media as a data storage medium is expected to be at least 4 times longer than that.

The key points here are that long life depends on using HIGH QUALITY archival DVDs and CDs and handling and storing them properly. The less you handle them the better, so for real archival use it is strongly recommended to make at least two copies. Put one away in storage under the conditions outlined below (vertical storage in a case under low temperature and low humidity conditions) and use one as your “working” copy.

THINGS TO DO:

Handle discs by the outer edge or the center hole.
Use a non solvent-based felt-tip permanent marker to mark the label side of the disc.
Keep dirt or other foreign matter from the disc.
Store discs upright (book style) in plastic cases specified for CDs and DVDs.
Return discs to storage cases immediately after use.
Leave discs in their packaging (or cases) to minimize the effects of environmental changes.
Open a recordable disc package only when you are ready to record data on that disc.
Store in a cool, dry, dark environment in which the air is clean.
Remove dirt, foreign material, fingerprints, smudges, and liquids by wiping with a clean cotton fabric in a straight line from the center of the disc toward the outer edge.
Use CD/DVD cleaning detergent, isopropyl alcohol or methanol to remove stubborn dirt or material.
Check the disc surface before recording.

Store discs in vertical position to ensure longer lifespan and data readability.

A standard jewel case is adequate for storage. In jewel cases, the disc is suspended by the center hole and isolates the written area from contacting any surface, it also offers some protection against rapid temperature changes

THINGS NOT TO DO:

Bend the disc.
Use adhesive labels.
Store discs horizontally for a long time (years).
Open a recordable optical disc package if you are not ready to record.
Expose discs to extreme heat or high humidity.
Expose discs to extreme rapid temperature or humidity changes.
Expose recordable discs to prolonged sunlight or other sources of UV light.
Write or mark in the data area of the disc (area where the laser “reads”).
Clean in a circular direction around the disc.
Scratch the label side of a CD.
Use a pen, pencil, or fine tip marker to write on the disc.
Write on the disc with markers that contain solvents.
Try to peel off or re-position a label.

It is strongly recommended to use special CD-PEN to label CDs and DVDs

Here are some more general recommendations on storing the archival optical media:

For archiving recordable (R) discs, discs that have a gold metal reflective layer are recommended. It’s said that with current disks, which are better sealed than they used to be, the use of gold as a reflecting layer is less important than it was, however it certainly doesn’t hurt!
For general storage, a temperature between 4°C (39°F) and 20°C (68°F) is recommended with a relative humidity of 20% to 50%
For long term storage, 18°C and 40% RH are recommended.
For extended term archival storage even lower temperature and humidity are recommended.
Storage in the dark, while not absolutely required, can’t hurt.

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FalconMedia products are amongst the highest quality CDs and DVD in the world today, with benchmark testing against other optical media products from the main players in the market showing improved durability, longevity and disc-to-disc consistency. They have also demonstrated lower error rates and jitters, and the printable layers of their discs show excellent ink-drying results and high resistance to water. The combination of these factors makes FalconMedia products the more secure archival media solution available in the market today.

Facebook’s optical media cold storage systems will be launched on the mass-market

Long-term optical media archival solutions significantly cut costs according to Facebook.

Recently Facebook revealed to the media that it was transferring enormous volumes of its content archives to more cost-efficient storage: new archival solution architecture, based on optical media. Later on, after successful implementation of the technology, some of the biggest optical media industry players announced that the technology would be marketed for other businesses and new optical storage devices are being developed to carry even bigger volumes of data.

Old, but still widely used data storage device - magnetic tape. — Old, but still widely used data storage device – magnetic tape.

The technology was called “Freeze-Ray” due to the specifics of its use: data is preserved in a type of storage known as “cold storage” for long periods of time and rarely accessed.

Typically, users of social networks tend to view photos that are recently uploaded: a week or two old images are accessed very often, so Facebook stores them on spinning HDD’s. At some point in time, when the pictures are no longer accessed frequently, they are relocated on high-capacity optical discs, where they are stored for years without being accessed.

The optical media industry experienced steady decline during the last decade as streaming services such as Netflix took over, but now, with the interest from Facebook and other giants, it is back to life as one of the keys to cost-cutting. Facebook says that optical media storage saves them 50% of the budget for storage solutions and is 80% more energy efficient.

The first version of Facebook’s storage system was based on a 100GB disk. Later this year it is planned to shift to 300GB discs and some companies from the industry are already working on 500GB and 1TB versions. Single system may accommodate hundreds and even thousands of discs, providing petabytes of archival storage.

In addition to being useful to business enterprises, archival storage may also be considered by individual households. Digital media nowadays is so universal, that it captures many personal family memories and stories: home videos, pictures, family portraits – over the course of time this content requires more and more storage capacity. Optical media storage is a reliable way of storing these memories: it does not consume electricity and it is more resistant to external threats.

Would you consider storing your personal archives on optical media? Could it be the next page data archiving history?