High Capacity Discs within a Decade

May 22, 2009 1815 hrs IST

Massive storage capacity in your palms!

We had only recently, on one of our Future Watch articles, covered a new technology being developed by GE, the U.S. based electronics giant. It talked about holographic storage that will allow users in the near future to straddle a staggering 470GB of data on a singe disc.

Now, we have another team from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, in collaboration with Samsung who are working on a new technology that can help create discs with a capacity 10,000 times greater than current generation DVDs. The technique allowed them to store an incredible 1.6 terabytes of data on a singe disc - with the potential being believed to be in the vicinity of 10 terabytes! To give you a fair idea on how large this is, a singe terabyte of storage space would be enough to hold 300 feature length films or 250,000 songs.

The technology will use a nanostructured material incorporated onto a disc in such a way that the researchers would be able to increase capacity without increasing the physical size of the disks. This is achieved by "adding" two more spatial dimensions on to the discs in addition t the existing ones. The new dimensions are the spectral and polarization dimensions. These new additions helped researchers to significantly up the storage capacity of the discs.

As for issues, the most daunting one is to find a way to write data on to the discs without having to wait for long periods of time. In any case, it would be a while since these discs would ever make it to the consumer market. We envisage a serious medical and military use of this one as this can be used for storing large amounts of data with encryption - a thing made easier, thanks to the increased data density.

USER COMMENTS

Hey heres a thot. If solid state drives are the future - then any and all kinds of discs will shortly be passe. So movies and music will be bought on mem cards or solid state storage devices - chips. .(not on dvds or bluray discs) Thus video players will be so small (just the electronics - no moving parts.) Thus lifetime of such media will be very long.

by ssd_guy, mumbai, on Jun 09, 2009 12:56 PM, Report abuse Reply

they could be used as cheaper backup solution :)

by Anonymous, xx, on Jul 05, 2009 05:01 AM, Report abuse

very very nice

by samuel, india, on Jul 04, 2009 08:07 PM, Report abuse Reply

It seems that TechTree wants to keep this Future Watch for the next decade until the disk is released and tested

by Deva, HYDERABAD, on Jun 28, 2009 07:56 PM, Report abuse Reply

Hi. I feel techtree has no reason to hold information on this unique storage device. As source of information for viewers and browsers like us it would be more supportive to enrich on the latest. Its the company Samsung and the Australian unversity which would hold on to any information. I feel techtree would be more happy to update followers like us.

by harishiyar, Delhi, on Jul 01, 2009 06:16 PM, Report abuse

I want to test it now.

by bholatamuli, sonari, on Jun 10, 2009 04:04 PM, Report abuse Reply

1. What are the write and access speeds? 2. What would be the cost? 3. Do we have to wait till the present stock of existing terrabyte Hard disks are sold out? 4. What is happening in the field of increasing the capacity of Flash drives to Terrabyte?

by KG Prasad, Secunderabad, on Jun 04, 2009 12:52 PM, Report abuse Reply

while considering the higher capacity the cost factor should be the prime look to use by general public also

by srini, chennai, on Jun 02, 2009 05:50 AM, Report abuse Reply

As storage capacity increases the price shall also be a crucial factor. If the product is new like this then inital price does matter?.

by Satish V Patil, Kolhapur Maharashtra., on May 31, 2009 02:01 PM, Report abuse Reply

I wish some scientists will invent a surgical method of implanting or adding spatial dimentions to our BRAIN also so that we could store more in our head. ....Nothing is impossible if we dream-visualise and make it happen

by Muraleedharan C, Thiruvananthapuram-Sashi Tharoor's place, on May 31, 2009 10:24 AM, Report abuse Reply

I thought Flash memory memory was the future. They r so much more faster sturdier and we don't have about scratches and works on bumpy roa

by USB lover, Faridabad, on May 31, 2009 08:09 AM, Report abuse Reply

read this every day and dream on............. Why?

by dfg, hdsfwe, on May 28, 2009 02:58 PM, Report abuse Reply

What will be the prices of these products.

by Rajesh P Shah, Chennai, on May 23, 2009 03:24 PM, Report abuse Reply