Researcher promises petabyte Hyper-CDs as we struggle to maintain interest
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 7th 2010 6:27AM
posted June 7th 2010 6:27AM
Holographic storage sure has a lot of potential, but so far all those promises have resulted in nothing more than broken dreams. Now we have some new promises, promises that we'll report with due skepticism. Romanian scientist Eugen Pavel is pledging that his company, Storex Technologies, can create a "Hyper" CD-sized disc (120mm diameter, 1.2mm thickness) capable of absorbing a whopping 1,000,000GB. Yes, a petabyte on a disc. This could (in theory) be achieved thanks to the company's expertise in "glass-ceramics compositions as well as read/write mechanics and optics concept(s) applicable to high-density data storage." You know, the ability to fit lots of stuff into small crevasses. Pavel also claims a 5,000 year disc lifetime, which is interesting, because back in 2000 he talked to PC World about another disc that could last 5,000 years -- one that would store a whopping 10TB. There is, apparently, no expiration date on his optimism. Ours, however, is getting a wee bit stale.
You can make wine out of his optimism
@WastedxYears
Never trust a company which's website shows nothing but the last press announcement and the email address of the CEO.
@WastedxYears
"You know, the ability to fit lots of stuff into small crevasses"
That's what she said!
Thanks, I'm here all week.
@WastedxYears Is he trying to get sponsors for his research? It's sad, but marketing one's projects is necessary to get funding.
@Eli Haj
give it to my niece, and ANY format will only last a day
And by the time this comes to fruitation, we'll have flash drives in the exact same size at twice the speed... or we'll be using our brains for storage/information recovery...
@GadgetTamer and to add to this
I think it's about time we moved on from optical tech. It needs big clunky drives, has terrible access time, and every time the amount of data that can be stored gets large, the transfer speeds drop a bit more... the seek time on Blu-ray is pitiful because the disk spins so slow.
I have a funny feeling blu-ray will be the last optical storage medium that's acceptable at all in seek/transfer speeds. Everyone is moving on. flash drives for carrying data, internet for downloading/moving music. It's just not worth it to keep working on optical tech.... at least not in my opinion.
@GadgetTamer sigh. i hate not being able to edit comments.
larger*
@GadgetTamer
"I think it's about time we moved on from optical tech..."
Don't you mean 'mechanical tech'? Optical storage has a lot going for it, there's no need for it to include rotating discs though.
@Exodite True. I guess it is the spinning disk part that makes it so slow. Just like the spinning disk makes hard drives so slow. (In comparison to SSDs)
@Exodite
Good you cleared that up. Most people who hear optical storage seem to think only of a CD and go "Oh my god! That's like 30 years old."
@GadgetTamer
Indeed.
Not to mention the noise. To this day I can't leave a DVD in my desktop as I'm risking cardiac arrest every time Windows decides to willfully spin up the drive at 4am.
@Exodite Same. Windows will randomly say "Hey, what's this?" and spin the drive up to full speed and start seeking to random areas of the disk.
Sounds like a jet taking off with a few slamming doors involved.
@GadgetTamer they should make special software so the disc is burned in a way that the data flops back and forth between each side of the disc so it can be read by two lasers at once thus improving the read time
If they use CDs they blew it!
@Kayalims
If something you said a month ago is still a meme on engadget, mocking said thing?
you BLEW it!
Glass/ceramics don't sound to "shit I dropped my cd" friendly
@DefPoet Thats the first thing i thought when i read this too.
@yankdez
by your theory we wouldnt get any wimax posts either
In ten years they've increased their expected capacity 100 fold. Unless my math has failed me, thats AMAZING!
I still very much like the idea of optical discs for back-up purposes. Slow to write, yes, but for that all important long-term back-up or archive, it would be great. Another reason I like optical disks is thanks to the paranoia Arthur C Clarke put into my head in his book 3001: The Final Odyssey where he talks about much of the worlds data having been lost due to the EMP from a devastating asteroid strike. All the SSD/RAM/magnetically stored data would be gone if a large enough EMP occured... whoops! Doesn't need an asteroid either.. a nice big Solar Flare could do it. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090223095214AAgqqkP
@rollocla Another good point.
I still have a lot of my music on CDs in the storage room, and EMP is a big risk to SSDs and HDDs...
@rollocla
I'd say if a solar flare would occur that massive and strong to do that then we will have much bigger things to worry about than your precious MP3s from your HDDs. For example loss of electricity, all of the power and communications infrastructure, health and financial records...
@SeeKo Did I mention MP3s? I'm a multimedia designer.. I'm thinking about my WORK! The things you mention are precisely what Arthur C. Clarke talks about being lost during an asteroid strike's EMP burst.. Birth/marriage/death records, family histories, masses and MASSES of important data... I LOVE that so much data is stored digitally now, but it's important that we safeguard against possible loss from EMPs
@rollocla But recordable optical disks use unstable dyes, that's why they're recordable. Aren't they just as susceptible to a similar incident?
5000 years.. 10TB.. that sounds orgasmic for my backup-operator ears..
Let. Discs. Die.
@cjori This would probably be useful for large corporate backup systems, since it would almost certainly be faster than tape. But that all hinges on the assumption that it'll ever actually be made.
@Khav So if big corporations want those discs, I don't mind but we at the "end-user" market don't need another disc brand, Bu-Ray, DVD and CD are really enough and they are all should die, IMO. Yeah including Blu-Ray, it NEEDS to die.
Ever since I removed all of the optical drives on my computers I don't regret it a bit, windows installation are faster, I don't spend any money about stupid discs and if anyone wants to transfer big files over to my computer they will use a USB flash drive, it's much faster and cheaper.
I'm sorry but I really can't figure out why would any one will want to use a disc these days when we have the fricking INTERNET!
shouldn't that be 1048576 gigs?
All well and good Engadget.
I agree, its highly unlikely he's going to 'productise' it as they say, so why even bother producing this article for the shyster? From his perspective, he's succeeded!
Its no different to that chap who reckoned we'd all be in flying cars by now, Moller? He keeps seeing media attention and turning out absolutely nothing too!
And one scratch would destroy how much data?
At the end of the day, I trust a back-up blu-ray disc safely stored in its case more then I trust a flash drive or hard drives. I've never had a back-up DVD fail on me, but I've had a few flashdrives die and more then enough hard drive failures to keep me using disc media.
DO NOT WANT. Remember those days of AOL trial CDs lying all over the place? I don't want to go back to that.
Quartz Access Memory Module would be nice like those in Babylon 5 sci-fi show.
@wsansewjs
Awe come on, my AOL trial CD's were never "lying" all over the place but were instead FLYING all over the place and as a result, for me, those days were fun!
"This could (in theory) be achieved thanks to the company's expertise in "glass-ceramics compositions" 5,000 years - impressive due to the amorphic nature of glass. I doubt it would last 100 years due to the thinness of the glass if it is indeed a glass optical disc.
Long live physical media!
It would take 4999 years to write that data though.
If this vaporware tech makes it to production, then I'm interested on one condition: cost/disc. To store that much data on a single disc is a scary thought and for me, I'd need triple redundancy (three copies of the same disc) to feel somewhat safe with a petabyte of my (prOn/warez/mp3's) - er' work...
Though I can understand the potential for confusion, I think that crevice is the appropriate word here. crevasse ≠ crevice