The Blu-Ray disc isn’t dead.

True, after the rise of Netflix, iTunes, and so many other services that push movies and TV shows over the Internet, the format isn’t exactly the future of high-def entertainment. But Facebook recently tossed Blu-ray a lifeline, fashioning a system that could transform these optical discs into a means of preserving the hundreds of millions of photos uploaded to the social network every day. Now Sony—the company behind the Blu-ray disc—has acquired the startup that grew from this Facebook project in hopes of bringing similar tech to businesses across the ‘net.

The startup, Optical Archive Inc., was founded by Frank Frankovsky, who oversaw Facebook’s efforts to streamline the data center hardware underpinning the enormously popular social network. Frankovsky says Sony and Optical Archive are working to create Blu-Ray systems akin to the one demonstrated by Facebook—systems that use robotic devices to store and retrieve digital information across thousands of optical discs.

Today, inside the data centers that run services like the Facebook social network, companies typically store digital information hard drives or flash drives. But Frankovsky and others argue Blu-ray provides a cheaper, more reliable means of storing older data. Though the medium doesn’t make sense for frequently accessed data (say, the Facebook photos you uploaded today), it suits archived data (the photos you uploaded five years ago). Frankovsky says it’s ideal for use inside financial services companies, which must retain data for regulatory reasons, even when few people are looking at it.

In Cold Storage

According Facebook director of engineering Jason Taylor, it’s best to think of such “cold storage” as a cheaper way for a company like Facebook to back up all its data. Rather than using ordinary hard drives and flash memory for, say, a second backup, you can use Blu-Ray. “If you take one out of your three copies and make it ‘cold,’ it’s an absolute savings in money,” he says.

In the past, companies have used magnetic tape drives for this kind of thing. But data stored on tape—like data stored on hard disk—is more vulnerable than data stored on optical disc. It’s susceptible to both humidity (a growing problem as companies cut costs by cooling data centers with the outside air) and electromagnetic pulses. “Optical drives will be as a pervasive as hard drives and tape drives in the coming years,” Frankovsky says.

Facebook has not yet deployed its Blu-ray system. But according to Taylor, the company plans to. “We’re testing now, and I’m confident we’re going to roll many racks into production throughout this year and on into next,” he says. Frankovsky hopes that others will follow suit as more and more digital data streams into the world’s companies.

A Bigger Blu-ray

Though the typical Blu-ray disc stores about 25 to 50GB of data—plenty for a feature film—Frankovsky and Sony are developing discs that house as much as a terabyte (1000GB). The idea is to build systems that use robotic arms to store and retrieve data across rack after rack of optical discs. The arms move discs into a central drive where data can be written and read before returning them to their racks.

Companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon can serve as a bellwether for the wider world of data center hardware. As these companies build new hardware to streamline their ever-growing online operations, others often mimic their work, sometimes driving entirely new hardware markets. Facebook actively drives this through its Open Compute Project, open-sourcing many of its hardware designs and encouraging others to do the same. Frankovsky helped found this effort and continues to serve as chairman and president of the independent foundation that oversees the project.

Typically, the Facebooks and the Google reshape the internet’s infrastructure by creating entirely new technology. But in the case of Blu-ray, the old tech will do just fine.

• Facebook
• Sony