new optical recording method

[Lost Soul]

A new optical recording method could pave the way for data discs with 300 times the storage capacity of standard DVDs, Nature journal reports.

Full Story

[CoffeeFiend]

could pave the way

As in, maybe, eventually (in a long, long time -- over 10 years), but we're only speculating.

Meanwhile, Inphase technologies has been promising holographic storage for what? Must be at least 5 years now. And it looks like they might finally deliver (horribly short on their capacity promises). 300GB discs at $180/ea (which buys you over 2TB of HD space), and the device to read/write them will only cost $18 000... It makes Fiber Channel SANs look cheap

Even Blu-Ray sucks. The writer prices haven't gone down a penny in just about forever (a couple years for sure). The disc prices have gone down a bit, but they still cost a LOT more per GB than hard drives (just for the media -- not counting the initial price of buying all those $250 drives for all your PCs either, and that no one else has the drive so the usefulness is still limited), and they're still small single layer 25GB discs (barely 3x the size of a DVD9). By the time multi-layer discs are affordable (if ever) and same drives that can actually write them, many years will have passed, and those sizes won't look so big anymore. Even today it doesn't look that great -- they're already selling 2TB HDs! It would already take 10 of those super 8-layer 200GB media to backup a single drive (instead of 80 single layer Blu-Ray discs, or 200+ DVD9's, or 400+ DVD5's). Even DVD9's can barely compete with hard drives in terms of $/GB (both around $0.10/GB or so)

Wake me up in 10+ years, when one of those people delivers anything worthwhile, at decent prices. I think optical storage is dying as it just can't keep up. Flash isn't going to eat hard drive manufacturer's lunches anytime soon either (performance issues, TRIM and such stuff, and despite dropping in price fast, still costing several dozens of times more per GB)

[Innocent Devil]

but we can drop a a DVD or BD to floor NOT a hdd

[CoffeeFiend]

but we can drop a a DVD or BD to floor NOT a hdd

I'll keep that in mind next time I'm playing frisbee with my data backups Mind you, I've seen a LOT of discs damaged this very way (sliding across the floor as it lands, scratching it). I've seen TONS of optical media age not-so-well too... It's hardly perfect. Either ways, it's just getting WAY too small for a lot of practical purposes (e.g. backuping my main computer with its 12 HDs, would take nearly 2000 DVD5's -- that's only 40 full spindles to burn!)

[Tripredacus]

In 10 years, people will be asking how to make Windows Datacenter Live DVDs, can't wait.

[cluberti]

LOL

[DigeratiPrime]

I feel the same as CoffeeFiend; optical media just doesn't have the capacity and speed to keep up with HDD. If you need reliability, there is RAID 1/5/6/10. Also convenience: I can setup automatic backups, something difficult to do with removable storage; it can also be sent across a network to an offsite secure location with ease. As for the random read performance of SSD, just get more RAM for now

[puntoMX]

The step will be solid "disks" any way.

Just a few months and we will use contacts between the Flash chips without the wires (read longer circuits) plus Toshiba is starting his 32nm 64Gbit chips next month or so. The 12cm disc is already 30 years old!

[Tripredacus]

Also think of the memory hit these drives would have. Buffering the content to read the files, etc. I doubt we will see this on any form of Windows that we see today. How much memory do you need to read the thing? Imagine how bad the initial MTBF for the drives will be! Also how long to burn the disc too! The idea reminds me of this:

If you like, you could upload a full terabyte of data to that data center in the sky. But even over a T1 connection, it would take you a good 80 days.

Its funny how everything nowadays seems to all be theory, as portions of the industry are moving faster than others and there is a huge bottleneck!