100 Gig Storage on a CD?

[Mr. Anderson]

MacUser UK had this really great article about a new CD/DVD like tech that will get 50 Gigs of data on one side of the platter. Unbelievable, but I can't wait to see it. Finally a viable backup alternative to the high end Gig harddrives.

http://www.macuser.co.uk/guest/php3/openframe.php3?page=newnews/newsarticle.php3?id=2032

[King Cobra]

That seems pretty cool. I heard that (actually someone posted this before me) there are suposibly 27GB disks that use blue light technology. But, obviously, that would be left in the dust.

It's amazing to see how technology seems to advance over the years...maybe by 2010 there will be a new name for a DVD and it can store 1TB of data! Yes, I'll keep dreaming. :)
__________________

Fear the King.

[MacAztec]

Originally posted by King Cobra
It's amazing to see how technology seems to advance over the years...maybe by 2010 there will be a new name for a DVD and it can store 1TB of data! Yes, I'll keep dreaming. :)
__________________

Fear the King.

Your probly right man.

I mean, think...around 10 years ago...we could only carry about 100k to 1MB of information.

Now, we can carry up to 4.x GB. Thats about 4,000 times better!

[teabgs]

If you read the article it says that the Blue laser is a SIMILAR process. Also. they expect a commercial product for 2005 or 2006. So, we have a while to wait. From the sound of it, it'll be here before the blue laser proccess

[SilvorX]

ya its amazing how much in technology has happened in the last 10 years, but then again theres technology (aka copy proof cds) that has been hacked :s lol

[firewire2001]

yeah.. totally, technology has become so much better...

i remember reading an article from an old article of a magazine boasting one of the first ibm hds that could only hold a few megs.. let alone a few gigs.

man, and to think that punchcards could hold a few holes that represented only bytes!

crazy...

[macfreek57]

the best i've heard is 600 GB (yes 600) on a penny-sized

[sageenos]

I read an article awhile back that said a company was making a disc that would hold 1 TB of data and is only the size of a regular cd. It's supposed to use holographic storage techniques. Basically, what it does is instead of holding one bit per mark on the disc it holds one million bits. I think it's like if you look at one of those holograms that you find on cards sometimes; if you look at the card from different angles you see a different picture from another surface that's at a perpendicular angle to your line of view. So the drive for that disc would just adjust the angle that it's reading from and get a whole new set of data.

[Macmaniac]

I wonder how much this would cost, maybe $5000 ?? I would love to back up like that. I ain't using 60gb yet but It woudl be so nice to have one cd that holds it all.

[britboy]

So we're going to have blue-laser, red-laser, holographic, FMD.... is this going to result in an ever worse standards war than we have now with DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RW+ (and whatever one's i've left out)?

I'm all for advances in technology, but would we have to buy a new reader for each of these standards? That's going to be confusing and expensive.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by britboy
So we're going to have blue-laser, red-laser, holographic, FMD.... is this going to result in an ever worse standards war than we have now with DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RW+ (and whatever one's i've left out)?

I'm all for advances in technology, but would we have to buy a new reader for each of these standards? That's going to be confusing and expensive.

I imagine expensive will be the operative word. And by the time the 100 gig cd comes out, we'll probably be using 200-400 gig drives (3 to 4 years away).
But that's still much better than the current technology, regardless. My only concern is speed. I think there's going to be a need to get the write speeds much higher. Imagine how long it would take to write a 100 Gig at the current speed. You'd have to run it over night.

[britboy]

Originally posted by dukestreet

My only concern is speed. I think there's going to be a need to get the write speeds much higher. Imagine how long it would take to write a 100 Gig at the current speed. You'd have to run it over night.


ugh. No thank you. If write speeds don't improve at the same rate as the capacity, it's probably going to be rather difficult for new optical technologies to take off. It would limit high-capacity cd's (or whatever they're called by then) to network back-ups. Consumers won't want to stand around for hours on end, waiting for their data to be written.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by britboy
ugh. No thank you. If write speeds don't improve at the same rate as the capacity, it's probably going to be rather difficult for new optical technologies to take off. It would limit high-capacity cd's (or whatever they're called by then) to network back-ups. Consumers won't want to stand around for hours on end, waiting for their data to be written.

That's my point, I think these things really will be used for back up, there's nothing that I have that's that big. The only thing I could see it being a great help in is putting 30 DVD titles on one piece of media. You'd need to deal with playing them, but I could see that being an option with these new devices.

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by King Cobra
It's amazing to see how technology seems to advance over the years...maybe by 2010 there will be a new name for a DVD and it can store 1TB of data! Yes, I'll keep dreaming. :)

Fantastic, our DVD collections will become the next Beta. :rolleyes:

It's an eventuality, but so soon? I sure hope not.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by Hemingray


Fantastic, our DVD collections will become the next Beta. :rolleyes:

It's an eventuality, but so soon? I sure hope not.

I think you might be jumping the gun here, hemingray. DVD came along and video tapes are still used, but losing ground. Until a cheap and easy recording system is created for DVD consoles, video will be around. And who knows when that will happen.

[Hemingray]

Originally posted by dukestreet


I think you might be jumping the gun here, hemingray. DVD came along and video tapes are still used, but losing ground. Until a cheap and easy recording system is created for DVD consoles, video will be around. And who knows when that will happen.

Yes but let's not forget our friend the laserdisc. :D Perhaps that would have been a better analogy.

You're right, DVDs will be around for quite awhile. And so will videos. I surely don't doubt that, but we seem to be adopting new technologies faster and faster as technology progresses. DVD might be the happy medium (no pun intended) for now, but I would LOVE to have the entire Monty Python TV series on a single disc! So maybe that's where this new technology comes in... like a single 33 1/3 RPM LP taking the place of a 78 RPM record set. :)

[AndreHAL]

Think you guys should take a look at this. (http://www.dntb.ro/users/frdbuc/hyper-cdrom/)

10 to 100TB capacity, and it's been around for a while.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=31724

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by AndreHAL
Think you guys should take a look at this. (http://www.dntb.ro/users/frdbuc/hyper-cdrom/)

10 to 100TB capacity, and it's been around for a while.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article.asp?aid=31724

Well the article said something about being available in 2001. Seems that might have slipped a bit, and all this ends up being is a prototype. I'd love to see it, I wonder why it hasn't happened yet. This almost sounds like something that was bought by a larger company to prevent it from ever being developed.....

[GeeYouEye]

Someday, we're all going to look back, and laugh "Only a hundred Terabytes? My god, how primative was that technology?"

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by dukestreet

I imagine expensive will be the operative word. And by the time the 100 gig cd comes out, we'll probably be using 200-400 gig drives (3 to 4 years away).
But that's still much better than the current technology, regardless. My only concern is speed. I think there's going to be a need to get the write speeds much higher. Imagine how long it would take to write a 100 Gig at the current speed. You'd have to run it over night.

I had to think about this for a minute... I can burn a 700MB cd in just over 3 minutes with a 24x burner. Keeping the burner speed there (even though they could make if faster) it would take about 4 minutes to burn a 1GB cd, so a 100GB cd would take about 6-1/2 hours. While that would be a drag during the day, it would be ok at night. Then again, if they are going for 50GB per side, that would make it better (time wise). If the burners are at 50x and higher, then the burn time really drops (which they could be). Remember where burner speeds were just a year ago??? Who would have thought that 24x would be so common, and 40x would be top end (for the moment at least). By then, there could even be 100x burners for all we know.

I would imagine that by 2005 we would have 500GB hard drives as standard issue. Just think back 3 years to what the drive sizes were then... 500GB doesn't sound all that outrageous, with larger drives very possible. Maybe even a 1TB drive in the current 3-1/2" form factor, spinning at 10,000 rpm, and being as silent as the current 5400rpm drives. I won't even try and think of what advances will happen in hard drive technology over the next three years, but I can see that all happening.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by AlphaTech

I would imagine that by 2005 we would have 500GB hard drives as standard issue. Just think back 3 years to what the drive sizes were then... 500GB doesn't sound all that outrageous, with larger drives very possible. Maybe even a 1TB drive in the current 3-1/2" form factor, spinning at 10,000 rpm, and being as silent as the current 5400rpm drives. I won't even try and think of what advances will happen in hard drive technology over the next three years, but I can see that all happening.

I'm looking forward to seeing cheaper and higher storage solid state harddirves, no moving parts, now that would be slick. A coworker has one and it looks exactly like any other harddrive, it just doesn't make any noise.

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by dukestreet


I'm looking forward to seeing cheaper and higher storage solid state harddirves, no moving parts, now that would be slick. A coworker has one and it looks exactly like any other harddrive, it just doesn't make any noise.

Sweet... How much does it hold??? They might do something with crystals at some point for data storage (a-la B5). You could carry everything you ever need in a pouch. That would be very cool... Make a reader that plugs into your firewire port (for people that can't get new systems) and go from there.

Who knows what we will see in the coming years... that's one of the things that makes it fun. :D

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by AlphaTech


Sweet... How much does it hold???

Not sure how much it holds, but approximately a low end harddrive. And its fast too, on the seek times, no spinning here.....

I'll find out and paste the specs when I get them.

Here's a link, you can check them out there.

http://www.bitmicro.com/products_edide.html

[AlphaTech]

Not too bad... except for the low capacity of the drive. Sorry, but 77.8GB in a single drive (3.5" form factor) just isn't all that much anymore. Also, 17.4GB in the 2.5" drive isn't enough either. Considering how you have 60GB hard drives out in the 2.5" form and 160GB in the 3.5" form.

Any links to get prices?? Are they more or less then same size ATA drives???

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by AlphaTech
Not too bad... except for the low capacity of the drive. Sorry, but 77.8GB in a single drive (3.5" form factor) just isn't all that much anymore. Also, 17.4GB in the 2.5" drive isn't enough either. Considering how you have 60GB hard drives out in the 2.5" form and 160GB in the 3.5" form.

Any links to get prices?? Are they more or less then same size ATA drives???

They are a lot more, so the technology has a ways to go. They are much faster than diskdrives, which is the only advantage they have a this point. Its my guess that the prices will get even lower and they will be better able to compete with the diskdrives. Until that happens you won't be seeing too many of these.

[AlphaTech]

It will be interesting to see where that tech goes. If it goes in a good direction, then we might see that for hard drives in the future... Then again, if they can't get the price per GB to a reasonable level, it will remain a niche market.

Time will tell.

[Mr. Anderson]

Get ready for this. The coworker who has the 17 Gig solid state drive (needs it so it can be put on a F18 - no moving parts so it can handle the G-Forces and still work) goes for, drum roll.....

$33,000.00, yep, that's right, $33k

OMG, its going to take a few years for this technology to hit the mainstream.

Sad thing is, its only faster and seek times, the overall data rate is dependant on the connect (UltraSCSI in this case)

[AlphaTech]

OMFG!!! That's just plain silly... Who in hell can afford that as an end user??? Take a few zero's off the price and I would have considered it, but 33 grand??? Sheeeeeeeit!

Since you said it was UltraSCSI, which maxes out at 20MB/sec, that's a ton of green for sorry performance (drive to system). Hell, ATA33 beats that.

[Mr. Anderson]

Originally posted by AlphaTech

Since you said it was UltraSCSI, which maxes out at 20MB/sec, that's a ton of green for sorry performance (drive to system). Hell, ATA33 beats that.

Oops, sorry, thats SCSI 2, so its 40MB/sec. But still that doesn't justify the price for only 17 Gigs. Like I said, places were moving parts are an issue, this is what you go for. You know and diskdrives that could take 10Gs and still read and write without the head being forced into the platter??

And since it was on contract, its not our own money, but still, you do have to wince a little....

[G5orbust]

The highest thing I've ever seen on a removable disk type medium is the blue laser DVD that can store 30 gigs. There's also that holographic thing that has almost limitless potential because it works in three dimentions instead of two like a cd style disk such as a DVD or CD-ROM. Who ever wants an explanation of the holographic storage medium, just write and it'll come to me.

[G4scott]

Whoops, didn't see the posts about solid state storage until too late. anyways, here's my spiel (or whatever that word is...):

All of these new abilities to write more and more on optical and magnetic media are great, but I believe they will become like what tape drives are now. Even if you have a 100000 RPM hard drive, or a 1000x CD burner, it would be impractical to put something like that in a laptop, or something that runs off a battery or has to take up little space. Tape drives were seen as something good, because they could hold so much data, but they had really slow access speeds... There are limitations to mechanical devices, such as optical media, and hard drives. What I see taking off in the future, is memory on chips, like the kind of memory that is used to make the L1 cache (I think it's called SRAM.) It doesn't need to be refreshed with power to hold its data, and has fast access times. If they could shrink down the size of chips, or even use some new DNA or atom sized transistors, I imagine you could get over 100 gigs in a relatively small space. It may take a while, but in the long run, I think it would be more beneficial. I just don't see optical technology going to super high capacities for much useful purposes where fast access time is an important factor. It would be nice, though, to store video and stuff all on one disc.

Eventually, cd's and hard drives will give way to smaller, faster, more powerful storage devices with large capacities and no moving parts. If you could utilize 20 512mb high speed ram chips into one storage device, you would have a very fast storage device.It would be expensive and bulky, but eventually, I think that things will come down to size and price. It may take 10-20 years or so, but I think it will be better...

Until then... 100gb of data sounds good for storing a whole series of a TV show... or, holographic, 3d TV... I'm thinking too much... oh well...

[G5orbust]

Originally posted by G4scott
Whoops, didn't see the posts about solid state storage until too late. anyways, here's my spiel (or whatever that word is...):

All of these new abilities to write more and more on optical and magnetic media are great, but I believe they will become like what tape drives are now. Even if you have a 100000 RPM hard drive, or a 1000x CD burner, it would be impractical to put something like that in a laptop, or something that runs off a battery or has to take up little space. Tape drives were seen as something good, because they could hold so much data, but they had really slow access speeds... There are limitations to mechanical devices, such as optical media, and hard drives. What I see taking off in the future, is memory on chips, like the kind of memory that is used to make the L1 cache (I think it's called SRAM.) It doesn't need to be refreshed with power to hold its data, and has fast access times. If they could shrink down the size of chips, or even use some new DNA or atom sized transistors, I imagine you could get over 100 gigs in a relatively small space. It may take a while, but in the long run, I think it would be more beneficial. I just don't see optical technology going to super high capacities for much useful purposes where fast access time is an important factor. It would be nice, though, to store video and stuff all on one disc.

Eventually, cd's and hard drives will give way to smaller, faster, more powerful storage devices with large capacities and no moving parts. If you could utilize 20 512mb high speed ram chips into one storage device, you would have a very fast storage device.It would be expensive and bulky, but eventually, I think that things will come down to size and price. It may take 10-20 years or so, but I think it will be better...

Until then... 100gb of data sounds good for storing a whole series of a TV show... or, holographic, 3d TV... I'm thinking too much... oh well...



Hey, look @ IBM's MICRODRIVE and the Compact Flash Cards. They're @ 1 GB each and they are pretty small and their capacity is just gunna get bigger.

[firewire2001]

umm.. jus a question...

why are discs that jus hold data still called "Digital Video Discs"... i know they originally stood for "Digital Versatile Disc".. but i havent seen that around for a while.. so why dont they go back to the old name for discs that just hold data? :p