Optical Storage Technology Association
Encyclopedia
Trade association
A trade association, also known as an industry trade group, business association or sector association, is an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry...
which promotes the use of recordable optical technologies and products, and most notably it is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the UDF
Universal Disk Format
Universal Disk Format is an implementation of the specification known as ISO/IEC 13346 and ECMA-167 and is an open vendor-neutral file system for computer data storage for a broad range of media. In practice, it has been most widely used for DVDs and newer optical disc formats, supplanting ISO 9660...
specification. Representing more than 85 percent of worldwide writable optical product shipment's manufacturers and resellers, it was incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
in 1992.
In the autumn of 2007, OSTA spearheaded a campaign to encourage families and photographers to back-up their digital photographs on compact discs. Since it is estimated that one out of seven computer hard drives "crash" within the first year , OSTA believes it is dangerous to merely rely on storing irreplaceable pictures on a hard drive alone. Optical discs (CD, DVD, BD), are an economical and reliable way to back up pictures and to make extra copies for greater protection and to share pictures with others.