87GB On DVD-Sized Media 354
BostonMACOSX points to this report in the Detroit News that says, in part, "Boston College researchers have found a way to store about 19 times more data on a disk than a common DVD can hold, using optical media made with common products, the December issue of Nature Materials reports." And it's a mix of high and low tech: the disk is formed of "an epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance," but written with a currently expensive laser.
backup (Score:2, Interesting)
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
One can only use so much porn....
When will consumers see this technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
I Currently have about 1.4 TB of data sitting here in my room on CD-R right now, and let me tell you -- it's getting out of hand. DVD writables are not a solution (Too little, too late theory). I would love nothing more than to consolidate the 13 200 CD Cases I have here into something a little bit more compact.
I've seen a couple of companies working on something like this (Optical CD-Sized solution that stores around 100 GB). Anybody have any theories to when the common dude can roll down to compusa (pick your posion) and snag a few blank 100 GB Disks for a reasonable price? I'm starting to feel like it's 1995 again when a 1.4M Floppy disk was as good as it got.
burnable media (Score:2, Interesting)
And by the time this comes out, or something like it, it will cost considerably too much for a while, and then it will be fairly priced and it will be a norm that we find boring. The RIAA will have a fit about it.
I think that new generations of storage media that use entierly new technologies, that really push the envelope, will be the real exciting times.
Screw Media (Score:3, Interesting)
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Other then people doing video work, at this time who really needs this kind of storage.
I have a 20Gb mp3 player and I still have not filled it 1/2 way.
I would hope that a system would never need more then 15Gb for a full useful install (included a suit of programs for use to be productive)
With the above listed size I would hope a system would never need, a 20 Gb system would still have 5Gb for user data, a 40 Gb system would leave 25 Gb for user data. (admittedly some specialty apps such as cad systems would need more storage, but here I am thinking more on the lines of home users, maybe I am wrong thinking there, maybe these systems are targeting business then I can see the use, databases can get very large)
Also how is the speed of this DVD?
What applications would you see for use of this technology?
I hate to say it... (Score:2, Interesting)
pondering... (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a dream (Score:3, Interesting)
gonna have to start putting them in cases (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about you folks, but I'm of the opinion that the CD/DVD format is on it's way out. I don't mean that CD's or DVD's are going away, simply that newer denser media won't look like those disks. The problem is this, as the spacial density of the data on the disk increases, the impact due to scratching increases. Instead of obliterating x number of bits, a scratch on a more dense media obliterates many times x bits.
This can be mitigated by using error correcting codes. The cost of these codes is that the number of bits required to represent the same amount of real data goes up. At some point on the density curve we will reach a point where the amount of error correction bits required to make the media immune to most normal scratches will equal the added amount of information storage due to a higher density.
We are already starting to see this with DVD's. How many times have you rented a DVD and it gets skippy and/or halts. Then when you eject it and look to see if it is scratched you see a few scratches that you know wouldn't even give your CD player pause were they to occur on a CD. That's because when the CD format was created they had a quarter inch rule in the standard. The error correction had to be able to withstand a quarter inch hole being punched in the CD. A DVD certainly can't handle that.
What we will begin to find in our exposed media disks is that a higher and higher percentage of the available bit positions on the disk will have to be devoted to error correction. Thus a boost of n in the density won't corrispond to a boost in the actual amount of usable data stored on the disk. The solution, of course, is to put the media in a case, like a 3 1/2" disk for example. This mitigates the risk of actually scratching the disk and so we wouldn't need such a high degree of error correction. We would have those bits to store actual data in.
CD Scratch = Bad (Score:4, Interesting)
You think 90 seconds is bad... (Score:2, Interesting)
As annoying as it is now, if I couldn't fast forward through them, I wouldn't rent them. Period. I don't want her watching a bunch of commercials.
And while she's clever, I'm not sure she's ready to log into our linux box and watch them on the computer. :)
Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story (Score:3, Interesting)
If 1K = 1024, then 1M = 1K * 1024 and 1G = 1M * 1024.
In which case, 4.7GB should actually be 5,046,586,572 bytes.
If you're the G=1,000,000,000 measurement school, then it should be 4,700,000,000 as you say, or 4.3GB in the 1024-base units, as I think a parent poster indicated.