PHILADLEPHIA (CBS) – While a diamond may last forever, your memories likely won’t — if you save them on a hard drive, CD, or DVD. But there’s a new disc hitting stores this fall that promises to keep your data for a thousand years or more.

Computer hard drives can fail, and an optical disc can oxidize and degrade over time — leaving you with a coaster.

“The three biggest enemies to all discs are light, temperature, and heat.”

Scott Shumway, CEO of Millenniata, says his company has come up with a fix.

“It’s actually a synthetic, rock-like material — it’s not an organic dye.”

And data is not burned but instead is etched onto this disc.

“If you want to store things, whatever’s precious to you — pictures, information — it’s permanent.”

Besides our personal stuff, Shumway says M-DISC is good for libraries, companies, and government agencies to store data and save on migration costs.

“Most have to migrate their data every five to seven years because it degrades. That’s hugely expensive, and it’s because they don’t have a way to record things permanently. If they just didn’t have to migrate, how much does that save them? I think the potential for this technology is just limitless.”

The M-DISC costs about $3. It stores as much as any DVD (4.7GB) and can be read in a standard drive. You’ll need a special drive to write the discs, but Shumway says they won’t come at a premium price. A Blu-Ray version of M-DISC should be available in time for the holidays.

Reported By Ian Bush, KYW Newsradio