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Microholography milks 500GB out of DVD-sized discs

arstechnica.com — Researchers have found a way to record to nanostructures in DVD-sized discs to store 500GB of data, and the team says that it will eventually be able to store 1 terabyte of data on those same discs with high data throughput rates.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 8, 2007

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  • ripple123, on 10/11/2007, -3/+34Well, Bluray is here and now. This is still in MagicalFantasyYetToBeCommercialisedLand.
  • NyteStarNyne, on 10/11/2007, -3/+33500GB??! Thats like Ultraviolet-Ray
  • Bonekhan, on 10/11/2007, -10/+40Very interesting--what was it BlueRay was supposed to achieve again?
  • prisoner24601, on 10/11/2007, -3/+33I'd just like someone to finally standardize one of these next generation drives on 8cm discs instead of 12cm ones. It's absurd that we still haven't gotten to the point where a copy of Quickbooks software or a DVD of Casino Royale is sold on a disc that's small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. And why my laptop still has to have this same huge size optical drive tray they've used for 20 years now instead of switching to the "pocket sized" optical discs just escapes me.
  • SilverBlade2k, on 10/11/2007, -0/+22once the MPAA gets this, the technology will be ruined by layers and layers of DRM...we all know it..
  • wildfire, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18I'm still waiting for holographic disc units to drop in price.

    This little beast isn't cheap: http://www.inphase-technologies.com/products/default.asp?tnn=3
  • thcobbs, on 10/11/2007, -7/+17Sweet... now I can ALMOST fit my entire porn collection on one, removable, disk.
  • Ansible, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10I've been hearing about this holographic storage tech for years now, but it never seems to arrive. I'll get excited about it when I can buy it on newegg.
  • Salgat, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10Agreed, I personally think we need to standardize those wallet sized discs.
  • specialK16, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9I'm pretty sure that when we were getting our first DVD players, movies and drives, there was already research into current generation formats; HD-DVD and BluRay. The same apply to this. Don't expect to get those holographic discs anytime soon.
  • afruff23, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9More like Gamma-Ray amirite?
  • sanman, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Holy frejoles and microholas!
  • ToadLeg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+725GB per layer with a theoretical maximum of 8 layers = 200GB.
  • ryouko, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Did it take anyone else about 5 full seconds to pronounce microholography, I was starting it off like alcohol?
  • serpentor, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8We've been hearing about holo/nano/bio data storage "breakthroughs" for a good 7+ years. Until I see this stuff on the shelf at Fry's, this "news" is getting really old, really fast.
  • RobotCitizen, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7You need more porn.
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6@TDR25

    almost like that kid from India who said he could do it by folding pieces of paper together.
  • rowlodge, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5flash memory would be more useful, since it would get rid of the harddrives moving parts.
  • Me1000, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6but how long does it take to write to?
    I mean it takes forever to burn a HD-DVD or blu-ray disk.
  • bryxal, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5not even the article, if you read the title you'd have the answer "Microholography milks 500GB out of DVD-sized discs" DVD sized.... meaning its still another format that is "theoretically possible at some point in time later"
    Not to say i don't hate sony as much as the rest of digg does
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Yes, with the increasingly huge storage density, the convenience of smaller radius trumps the inconvenience of smaller capacity.
  • DAVIBE, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Holographic disks are for the future. by future i mean in 2025+.
    Some companies use HVDs for HDD purposes & i guess we will too. Not to mention how HVDs costs ridicusly expensive.
    (800$ + the disk, 10000+ the drive)
    For now i guess, we will use Bluray or HD-DVD as our disks.
  • tdurden, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3in a few years whatever you buy will obsolete regardless of this
  • flyingmonkey350, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5haven't we Heard this same thing several years ago?
  • cquinnd, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4You think we just store that stuff in mid-air?
  • JaYBrooks, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Unseeable? Kinda like Un-obtainium. Seriously though. This has been happening for a long time. There is always a really good recording media storeage type. Will it every get accepted?
  • cosinezero, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3And just imagine how long THAT key will be. It'll be almost... but not quite... too long to post on digg!
  • Sethwm2, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Yeah I do not know why people dugg you down... The data is going to be highly compresses on that disk and one little scratch could take out gigabytes!!
  • dn11, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2weren't we all supposed to be carrying holo cubes by the year 2000?
  • IceX, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2some japanese company had 1 terabyte holographic dvd-sized discs like 2-3 yrs ago, around the same time that paper dvds were announced if i remember correctly.
  • nubnub, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Can they transfer this to normal hard drive disk drives?
  • wildfire, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Pretty useless for movies unless it was in uncompressed HD video format or a multi-movie disc (which I doubt any MPAA affiliated studio would bother doing). Otherwise, I see its use subjugated primarily towards data archival purposes.
  • apollomurga, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2one possibility i thought of really was just bigger video games with more room for content yay!
  • afruff23, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Well the small disks can't hold as much data obviously.
  • prisoner24601, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Hulk angry he cannot store all his mp3's on one disc! Hulk getting very angry!
  • iFox, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I heard this like 5 months ago... Very nice though.
  • phenom2k7, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"Pioneer is developing an optical disc that will blow away the hard disc in most of our PCs in terms storage capacity, holding 500 GB of data. How so? Pioneer's lasers are ultraviolet, which have an even shorter wavelength than the blue."

    I remember reading this years ago when blu-ray was added to howstuffworks.com
  • specialK16, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4hehe, clever.
  • jester55, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1who here came in knowing what microholography was?
  • LouisMarlowe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1How likely is it that you'll want a TB of space all in one go?
  • thesarlacc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I agree. I cannot see this entering the movie format war because of the unrealistic data transfer rates needed. For a 2 hour movie with no extras on the disc, the reader who have to suck 1000gb / 7200seconds = 140mb/s (approx) from the disc. Considering read speeds dont even match data capacity now, I can't see it happening...
  • Pyroxene, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Yes. I remember watching some old video during the mid 1990s where IBM was producing a holo drive that was about the size of a sugar cube. Where is that device? I saw on http://www.colossalstorage.net/ "5 Exabytes in 2003 of new data use to be the model but last year there was 160 Exabytes of new data. The first part 2010 is expected to see 600 Exabytes of new data with end of 2010 about 1 Zettabyte of new data and growing ! Present day data storage technology is lagging behind and it will start to impact internet performance." I'm still waiting....
  • cryptoki, on 02/01/2008, -1/+1Popular Science Magazine put out an article in the mid 80's.. I remember, the storage media looked like a credit card.. (about 5 times as thick and see through) and could be read and wrote to with lasers... it was in the "whats new section" , Ive never seen it since.... Wonder what happened?. They even mentioned the possibility of being able to create custom full color or b&w 3D images.. of lets say an eagle or a coin for example, and you could read and write gigs of data to your images burned in to the card for fun, or use no images at all....with possibly hundreds of layers per disk.
  • thesarlacc, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2well it takes roughly 45mins to burn 8gb at 4X to ensure it burns properly, so at that speed u would burn 1TB in (1000gb / 8gb) * 45 = 5625mins = 93.75 hours

    still want to milk your dvd's?
  • crlake, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I agree, but It's gotta be invented doesn't it? Don't you want to know what's going on?
  • inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0amen.
  • Goombellaofgoom, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Microhol-ography... Would that be mapping the habits of a microholic? What's a microholic? (^_^)
  • UKsHaDoW, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1its the Internet his talking about. Everything will stored on the internet is what he is trying to get at. Like joost.
  • angrykeyboarder, on 10/11/2007, -5/+5If you had read the article, you'd have the answer to that question. :)
  • thesarlacc, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0and how do you think the "Internet" stores stuff?
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