Even before Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have fought the final battle to take control of your average home, another gigantic threat has cast its dark shadow over them.
With hordes of fancy, futuristic storage concepts being born every other day, the death of optical media has been a topic of prolonged discussions. Realistically speaking, the cost vs. storage & speed ratio of optical media has so far given it an unbeatable stand. Instead of engaging in such fruitless discussions, the Israeli firm Mempile decided to take it one step further. They have extended the existent CD / DVD technology to offer 1 TerraByte (1,000 GigaByte) of storage on a single removable (inexpensive) disc.
The TeraDisc contains light sensitive molecules called chromophores (capable of switching between two distinct states upon the application of light ) which are arranged in three-dimensional hologram like matrices and give the disc is characteristic terrabyte storage capacity. That is when a Red Laser is used for reading and writing. According to Mempile, usage of Blue Lasers can eventually boost the capacity upto 5 TerraBytes.
However, it’s going to take at least 18 months for the first prototypes to be tested by Mempile and yet another year before this incredible disc goes into active production.
Source: Engadget, Mempile’s TeraDisc fits 1TB on a single optical disc
Vyoma said:
Well, Sourjya. This really is an exciting news.
Up until few days back, I was happy with my 120 GB hard disk. The data I created with documents, and images(artwork) never exceeded handful of GB.
But then, I started experimenting with video. And boom! The 120 GB hard disk seems so small. If these reaches consumer market fast enough, I would be happy to skip the technology cycle and go straight for this.
miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG said:
You bet it is !! Just when I was beginning to think – what’s next, in comes the TeraDisc. Now if only they concentrate on giving the read / write speeds a boost ! Coz that’s one place where optical media severely lags.
Floppy Disk, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and Terabyte Disks - Data Storage For Consumers | Splat said:
[...] I have not used Floppy Disks a lot – but I have had my share as I started of my experience with computers in CLIs. Over the years, the scope of data storage from a consumer perspective has grown in scale – from floppy disks to TeraDisks. Not long back, Vinyas had written about Blu Ray disks, and now Sourjya writes about TeraDisks in the near future. [...]