Panasonic has teamed up with others before to push optical disc archive technology, and today it announced a new partner in its quest: Facebook. Because the social network is simply bursting at the seams with future Throwback Thursday moments, it needs a way to store (and occasionally access) "cold data." Enter freeze ray, a disc format the two companies have been working on for a couple of years. Currently Facebook is using the first generation, a 100GB Blu-ray disc-based system, and says the 300GB Archival Disc-based system will be deployed later this year. future plans to move to 500GB and even 1TB discs could provide significant energy and cost savings at data centers, and ensure that the one picture you don't want anyone to see will always be accessible.

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