General Electric unviels 500GB optical disk

[Paulrus_Keaton]

From the BBC...

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.

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.

Brian Lawrence, who leads GE's Holographic Storage said on the GE Research blog: "Very recently, the team at GE has made dramatic improvements in the materials enabling significant increases in the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms."

More capacity

The higher reflectivity that can be achieved, the more capacity for the disc. While the technology is still in the laboratory stage, GE believes it will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray technologies.

In a statement the firm said: "The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs."

''GE's breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer,'' said Mr Lawrence in a statement.

He added: "The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think.''

Micro-holographic technology has been one of the leading areas of research for storage experts for decades. Discs are seen as a reliable and effective form of storage and are both consumer and retail friendly.

However, General Electric will need to work with hardware manufacturers if it is to bring the technology to the consumer market.

The relatively modest adoption of Blu-ray discs sales globally might be an issue with some companies who believe digital distribution and cloud computing is the long-term answer to content delivery and storage.

"This is truly a breakthrough in the development of the materials that are so critical to ultimately bringing holographic storage to the everyday consumer," said Mr Lawrence.

Spiffy.

 

[Kirra]

That disk has more space them both of my hard drives together.

 

[TheTygerfire]

Wow...now maybe FF XIII will only need 2 discs now
>______>

 

[SyphonX]

I was just talking to my friend on how viable and affordable storage needs to catch up with the rest of technology. It seems this is starting to happen, more or less. Whether or not they make it reasonable for the consumer within the next 5 years is another thing altogether.

Discs aren't really what we need, while they are a step in the right direction, what we need is better HDD's, namely a mainstream consumer SSD (Solid State Disk) that isn't ridiculously expensive.

This generation of storage technology hasn't had any companies bite the bullet to release their products to mainstream. Hoarding slows down the entire process and stagnates the industry. Media (Games, Movies, Etc.) is starting to outgrow the technology it relies on. Until someone takes the fall and offers their technology for the rest of us, it doesn't mean anything at all. It will just stay in high-tech facilities and we'll continue to read about it in articles for 5-10 years.

 

[Skizle]

the big question is how much will this cost and how sson it will catch on. otherwise this could go the way of dial-up

 

[fix-the-spade]

Credible replacement for the DVD: found?

Obviously won't turn up on the streets for a while. But a disc you can back up entire hard drives onto would probably attract sales. It's certainly a much, much easier to demonstrate difference than the DVD/BluRay gap.

Maybe we can have a disc with every version of Blade Runner on it now?

 

[Ranooth]

Wow, Sony will be kinda pissed if these things are released.

 

[Brotherofwill]

I never understood the kind of fetishistic fantasies that some people have with storage capacity. Blu-Ray already has way to much storage, this is just over the top.

 

[Wordsandstuffwillbenexttothis8465]

Just had a random thought, you could essentially use this disk as a main hard drive for you PC, but make it eject able so you could pretty much take your computer over to a friends put it in his computer and there ya go.

 

[nova18]

Yeah but how long will it be after they release 500GB discs before we have 1 TB discs.

Technology moves faster that I can afford, sometimes that hurts

 

[Axeli]

To all those who think digital distribution will eliminate physical media, GE just proved you wrong.

The typical hard drive size is what, ~ 4" x 5.5 x 1"? That's 22 cubic inches, compared to an optical disc's 1.27 cubic inches. Both with the same capacity, optical discs win.

No, it's not that.

The thing holding digital distribution back is the fact that internet connections are relatively slow for transfering games, especially 50 Gb ones.

 

[Monocle Man]

I'm guessing by the time that thing would hit the commercial market they'll be able to produce 10TB discs.

 

[Vauban]

This is just like the SDXC Card that can go up to 2TB [http://gizmodo.com/5125341/new-sdxc-memory-card-spec-supports-2tb-capacities], while these are great for people who have a ton of data it's still a long ways off.