# Optical disc offers 500GB storage



## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

"A disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric."

"The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players.

Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB. Micro-holographic discs can store more data than DVDs or Blu-ray because they store information on the disc in three dimensions, rather than just pits on the surface of the disc"

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8021012.stm?ad=1

I WANT ONE OF THESE!


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## zack11742 (Apr 27, 2009)

Those discs are twice the size of my hard drive haha I could back it up with one that would be amazing!!!


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I have my doubts that you'll be able to write these, at least for some time. I read that it's going to be a R/O media.


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## zack11742 (Apr 27, 2009)

why would they do that though? Writing to those would be revolutionary and amazing


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Because writing a holographic image is NOT a trivial undertaking, it's much easier to press them in bulk at a factory. That's why they're talking about movie distribution in the news clip. 



> The challenge for this area of technology has been to increase the reflectivity of the holograms that are stored on the discs so that players can be used to both read and write to the discs.


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## zack11742 (Apr 27, 2009)

ohh now that makes sense I didn't even think of that. How would you write to those?


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Well, apparently, someone thinks they can solve it, but they're not there yet.


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## casper0191 (Apr 2, 2009)

Well that mean another upgrade is required so that the computer can read this kind of Discs.


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## zack11742 (Apr 27, 2009)

yup windows 7???


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## casper0191 (Apr 2, 2009)

zack11742 said:


> yup windows 7???


Well not exactly this is might be a another type of disk that requires a higher type of burner. But still that is a theory. But who will be trusting his 500 gigs of files on an easy to be scratched or break/crackable Piece of plastic. If you are going to store such a big file at least save it to a more reliable piece of equipment.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I imagine that the writability of these things will be solved in short order. The technology certainly exists in an almost completed form in other fields, like computerized tomography and 3-D CAD applications and machines. The technology of using X-rays from multiple directions to focus energy to a point is also similar. It's really a problem for the materials scientists and great strides have been made in that area in the recent decades. We're talking more about interference patterns here than refractory chemical dyes.

Besides, holograms are totally different from the single point way that data is stored now. A hologram cut from a hologram still contains all the data of the original, whole hologram.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

casper0191 said:


> ...But who will be trusting his 500 gigs of files on an easy to be scratched or break/crackable Piece of plastic. If you are going to store such a big file at least save it to a more reliable piece of equipment.


If you're storing data on such a disk, you'd obviously have more than one copy. Also, it's really not that difficult to store the media so you don't scratch it unless you're really the careless type.

I'm personally an advocate of having your backups on two different types of media, say optical and hard disks.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Definitely 2 backups. Though I have had older CD's mysteriously start "flaking" after a few years, some old hard drives seem fine. It seems a bit counter-intuitive that hard drives could be used for safe, long-term storage, but that is exactly what I have experienced. If they are kept dry and away from magnets, and there are no EMP's in their area, hard drives seem to retain data amazingly well.


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## dustyjay (Jan 24, 2003)

I keep two system images on seperate Hard Drives. One of the hard drives is external and is kept in my my fireproff file cabinet when not in use. This drive has the up to date image as well as the clean install image of all three of my computers. Each computer has a smaller hard drive as storage only for saving a working image of the system from day to day. Also any critical Data and photos are saved on DVD as well.


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## casper0191 (Apr 2, 2009)

JohnWill said:


> If you're storing data on such a disk, you'd obviously have more than one copy. Also, it's really not that difficult to store the media so you don't scratch it unless you're really the careless type.
> 
> I'm personally an advocate of having your backups on two different types of media, say optical and hard disks.


Well that is the typical problem now. What if a just typical computer user whose doesn't know how to do a proper backing up and they might just end up trust one type of storage. Also What if they are that reckless on handling a disk. 
I really feel sorry for them if they they are that reckless. thanks by the way.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

I keep one set of hard disks in the basement in a cinderblock enclosure against the wall. They're networked to everything, and I backup to them at least once a week.

I have a MOZY on-line backup account that I ship my critical documents to.

I also have some USB drives that get backups.

Finally, I have a terabyte DNS-323 that has automated once a day backups of everything.

I might lose it all, but I doubt it.


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## casper0191 (Apr 2, 2009)

Wow that is one hell to hide a back up. Also it's good to have an online storage as well


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## blitzkreig (Mar 6, 2009)

Even I want one of these
But its going to be a real expensive affair.
For e.g BluRay disc
25-40 gigs of storage, way too expensive especially the readers. I'll have to wait for a few years until the prices fall drastically :up:


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

No way I'm going to even buy a BluRay writer, I'll wait for the early adopters to work the bugs out.


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## zack11742 (Apr 27, 2009)

Yes definitely more than one copy but it would be nice for say making 50 copies for paranoid people =]


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## casper0191 (Apr 2, 2009)

zack11742 said:


> Yes definitely more than one copy but it would be nice for say making 50 copies for paranoid people =]


Well maybe they experience a bad things about making back ups.


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