Researchers tout 500GB optical discs

Compared to some of the recent optical disc advances we've seen, 500GB may not seem like all that much, but according to the researchers behind the so-called "Microholas" project, they've found a means to cram that amount onto "regular" HD DVD or Blu-ray discs. The key, it seems, is a new microholographic recording technique that makes use of nanostructures inside the disc to squeeze in as much data as possible. They're apparently not quite satisfied with the results just yet though, saying that they expect the technology to one day let them store a full terabyte of data on a single disc, which they assure us will not be used to "stash away a thousand movies," but instead be used for "secure long-term storage."

[paloooz @ Jul 6th 2007 8:44PM]

Take that Blu-Ray!

/sarcasm

[JohnDoe303 @ Jul 6th 2007 9:18PM]

"they've found a means to cram that amount onto "regular" HD DVD or Blu-ray discs."

Take that HD-DUD..?

/sarcasm

[am @ Jul 6th 2007 9:13PM]

A thousand movies on a 1 TB disc? At that compression rate, I'll have to say no thanks. I can't stand it when the space behind the Death Star is all pixelated. Wake me when you have an 8 TB model.

[Pal @ Jul 6th 2007 9:38PM]

One little scratch and you'll lose tens of gigabytes!

[Mike @ Jul 6th 2007 10:06PM]

"...They assure us will not be used to 'stash away a thousand movies'..."

Hey, speak for yourself! :)

[Chuckles McGee @ Jul 6th 2007 10:10PM]

"secure long-term storage"- AKA porn.

[Blake @ Jul 6th 2007 11:28PM]

Or rainbow tables....

I find both equally arousing.

[Dragod @ Jul 6th 2007 10:30PM]

can You Say Halo 1, 2, 3, Gears of War, GoW 2 + 3, Bioshock, and Oblivion all on one disc?

[Natedog @ Jul 6th 2007 10:40PM]

Throw in some F.E.A.R., a few Valve games, a nice helping of FarCry and Crysis, and I'm sold! Maybe the next resource-hogging Battlefield game will fit on one of these discs, too!

[Constable Odo @ Jul 6th 2007 10:56PM]

So to fill up this 500 GB optical disk to capacity, it'll take, what, maybe 8-10 hours burn time? And on the 10th hour you get an error message indicating you have an aborted burn due to bad media. How nice.

[tekdroid @ Jul 7th 2007 10:58PM]

All joking aside,
You don't have to fill up your usb drive immediately. Nor zip disc. Nor DVD-RAM. If they make it rewritable and a real data format allowing you to save files directly on it at will (like a hard drive, dvd-ram, usb thumbdrive, floppy disc), you won't have to write anything linearly like traditional cd and dvd. DVD-RAM, for instance, is far more reliable than standard DVD rewritable and write-once formats.

But if you use good media, there's nothing wrong with current "linear" dvd. Taiyo Yuden make great media.

[Constable Odo @ Jul 8th 2007 9:24AM]

I didn't understand the article then. I was just guessing it was a big DVD since that's all I'm familiar with. My Panny DVD recorder uses DVD-RAM, but I thought that was out-dated technology now.
The way I back up my movies and stuff is to usually wait until I've got a full disk's worth to burn so I just guessed this new optical would work the same way. I do buy good media, but even so, out of a hundred, one or two blanks may have a defect. If we will be able to write to this new media as we do a hard drive or USB drive, then I'd have no objections to it at all.

[tekdroid @ Jul 6th 2007 11:52PM]

The idea is not to stash away a thousand movies on a single disc, but to use the technology for secure long-term storage, the Prof said.
----------------
In other words, "we are targeting the product at enterprise-type applications, but in reality you can do with it what you please".

Seems every week we find these research projects doing the "cram as much space onto a disc" thing.

Make it rewritable, make it reliable and bring it to market now please.

[neopia9 @ Jul 7th 2007 12:22AM]

And to think, 640K was supposed to be enough for anyone...

[Castle @ Jul 7th 2007 12:28AM]

For what its worth, all the HD-DVD/Blu-ray manufacturers are the ones doing a lot of R&D into these Halodisks (Toshiba, Sony, NEC, Matsushita, etc.), they are likely over a decade away from market.

For current 1080p video, 30-50GB is enough for a feature length film. But who knows what the future holds.

[El_Pachuco @ Jul 7th 2007 12:41AM]

Now to watch our movies in 4k!

[stennex @ Jul 7th 2007 1:03AM]

Blu-Ray went 200GB almost 2yrs ago.

[Slekicp @ Jul 7th 2007 2:04AM]

Another disc format that I will never get a reader/player/burner for; my laptop doesn't even burn dvds.

[TIMMAH! @ Jul 7th 2007 2:49AM]

Micro Hellos?

[hari @ Jul 7th 2007 3:42AM]

it is superb to find this thing ... but i wish they come out with pendrives with this capacity ...

[erik umenhofer @ Jul 7th 2007 5:00AM]

cd/dvd media is by far the worst way to store data. most of these discs are degraded beyond any use after a year or so. most consumers never see this occur, because they just burn new copies all the time. it scares me to think we are pursuing this media as a form of long term storage without fixing the issue of dye leaking/warping/whatever that causes cd/dvds to fail after a year or so.

[Dave @ Jul 7th 2007 5:57AM]

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/questex/hom070807/index.php?startpage=4

[Tim @ Jul 7th 2007 8:30AM]

Do we really need these disks to get more data squeezed onto them?

We have flash media, we have hard disks. We have the Internet for crying out loud. Why do we want to make the laser etchings smaller and more fragile on these disks?

[Miles @ Jul 7th 2007 12:37PM]

Because it will be the cheapest data medium for a good while.

Call me when any of those can be the few cents it takes to make optical discs.

[oversandal @ Jul 8th 2007 2:26PM]

Pal//Good point