If I had read this article 5 years ago, I would’ve been very excited about but with the recent improvement in flash-type storage, I wouldn’t bet for optical storage anymore.

I’d rather see a 1TB SD card, that would impress me.

[H]@RD5TUFFThere is no point as blu ray are way over priced as is, who would pay for a disk that you could lose tons of data with 1 scratch, not to mention you can get 2 tb for 100 dollars, and the argument of portability is a joke, a HD is just as portable, and far more durable than this will be with all the layers.

Optical media is dead for anything buy movies and consoles, this is a pointless product.

Blu-ray cost is not over priced and is still dropping in cost. We finally have a set standard that will not need too many more system update, discs are at their lowest, and we are reaching Sub $70 blu-ray players. Besides, when has 1 scratch been enough to destroy a disc. I have DVD that look like I clean them with sandpaper that still play just fine. And if push comes, resurfacing either mechanically or chemically is always an option.

amschipGuys you all forgot about tape drives
LTO-4 standard can store 1600GB in 2:1 ratio (uncompressed 800GB) and LTO-5 will have twice as much. The transfer speed is around 120MB/s including on the fly compression.
And each cost about 25Euro.
I really see no point in this tech.

Tape Drives? This is an example of big companies refusing to update their systems but once every 50 years. Tapes only have a 30 to 50 year life span right, so every so often they will have to make new backups. Luckily these are, as you said, still cheap.

TurdFergasunpretty simple solution to this technology, keep your HD backups offsite and offline. there i just made the reliability moot. the reliability between this product in a box, and a HD in a box will be the same, in all practical purposes. when's the last time you had an offline HD fail? whens the last time you couldn't actually recover the data from a failing drive? if your optical drive fails and tdk stops making them, how you gonna retrieve your data?

Both solid points. I have no argument their. I still say that when SSD's are as cheap as HDD's, it will be the backup storage of choice. The drives themselves are already damn near bomb proof. And as long as computers operate on a binary system, the disks can be extrapolated. Even if the drive fails to work, it is possible the data on it will just be frozen as is and unchangeable.

TheLaughingManBlu-ray cost is not over priced and is still dropping in cost. We finally have a set standard that will not need too many more system update, discs are at their lowest, and we are reaching Sub $70 blu-ray players. Besides, when has 1 scratch been enough to destroy a disc. I have DVD that look like I clean them with sandpaper that still play just fine. And if push comes, resurfacing either mechanically or chemically is always an option.

Blu-Ray is way over priced, the cost per GB is insane, for what it costs for 1tb of blu-ray, I could have more mechanical storage. Also 30 dollars a movie is crazy when 90% aren't worth 5! The more layers the more proned to scratches as they aren't likely to make the discs thicker to add more scratch resistance, also the difference between the amount the size of the for lack of a better word "cord" meaning a smaller scratch, could have far more disasterious results.

TheLaughingManBlu-ray cost is not over priced and is still dropping in cost. We finally have a set standard that will not need too many more system update, discs are at their lowest, and we are reaching Sub $70 blu-ray players. Besides, when has 1 scratch been enough to destroy a disc. I have DVD that look like I clean them with sandpaper that still play just fine. And if push comes, resurfacing either mechanically or chemically is always an option.

Of course thay are expensive not to mention very unreliable. I had a lot of hassle even with verbatim dvds and had to reburn some of them for a second time. that adds to the overall cost of course. Now how much more expensive it gets when you have to reburn BD-R media? And how much more exensive and time consuming it gets with this new tech?
Also you are talking about DVD scratches not a BD ones. Also there is a difference between recordable media and press made ones. I have a few old dvd movies and they are scratched as hell ad work fine while few scratches on my DVD-R disk effectively killed it. Now if I have to burn a dvd I use quick par to add some parity files onto it for additional security.

TheLaughingManTape Drives? This is an example of big companies refusing to update their systems but once every 50 years. Tapes only have a 30 to 50 year life span right, so every so often they will have to make new backups. Luckily these are, as you said, still cheap.

And this is really what you need. In 30 to 50 years you will have far more advanced technology and guess what will be faster moving data of the optical media or tape? Because you have to move it eventually.

The larger capacity in a disk, the more likely a tiny scratch will cause disk failure.
That is why hard-disk platters are in their cages in the first place.

inferKNOXExactly my thoughts.
Depending solely on electronic media would be a catastrophic fail in the event of a massive EMP. That is especially important to consider when taking into account that the sun is said to be building up to a solar maximum in the near future, which will have the possibility of producing a solar flare powerful enough to damage much of earth's electronics.
In our world archiving is important, whether history, or personal items such as movies, etc, and IMO, the less volatile the media is to electromagnetism, the better. Discs with this level of storage hardly seems to be intended to be carried around with you daily, but rather for long-term large-scale storage.

I'm glad that it seems that the written surface seems to be internal, thus reducing that the written surface peals off or warps from corrosion over time, like on DVDs, etc.:toast:

In case of a mass-scale EMP, computers themselves would be dead as well. As well as all of the machines to fabricate microchips. By the time you would have machinery to read your backup data, the data itself will be useless.

Enough with the dirt and scratches on discs!

All this talk of data capacity with Blu-rays and terabytes disks by TDK and others and it still have not address some fundamental problems with the disks that are utterly annoying to people: scratches, dirt and the obsolete 5.25 disk size.

First:

A 5.25 inch size disk was real small back there when it replaced the enormous LP records but today in the age of 8 Gb micro SD cards and IPhones it looks like a whale. This disk size is 38 years old fellows, we need a smaller disk already.

A way to deal with this and preserve backwards compatibility is to use a special tray that has different depressions like the ones we have that have a smaller depression for the 3 inch disks or like the way the Panasonic DVD-RAM players had which had a square shaped depression or inset shape for the DVD-RAM disks but was still able to play CD-ROMS.

Or better yet forgo the stupid backwards compatibility altogether and create a new player for smaller disks and so what if we do so? DVD players for home are at $20.00 or less already and DVD recorders for PCs are at around the same prices and Blu-ray players and recorders prices are falling fast just like it happened for DVD players and recorders and will be there soon too.

If we want backwards compatibility all that we will need to do is to go out and buy a $18.00 Blu-ray player which is the price that they will have when a new format is introduced or by then most people PCs will have a Blu-ray player-recorder already just like they have DVD player-recorders all over the place today and then we will be able to transfer everything to the new disks so we would only need to buy the new format players-recorders.

Second:

I am way, way beyond sick and tired of dealing with disk scratches and other kinds of dirty smudges or substances in the surfaces of disks and most people probably feel the same about it too. Protective disk coatings for Blu-ray disks are not going to cut-it in the real world so that is hogwash, that can only help a little but it won't handle the problem completely by far. I am very, very careful and responsible with the handling of my disks and I end up with scratched and dirty disks anyway but most of the family members and friends that I know of end up all the time with disks that look like they were attached with a string to the rear bumper of their cars for two months.

Leave alone the fact that a huge amount of these disks end in the hands of little children for game machines or video players and they treat the disks even worst than adults do. Do you really think that those Blu-ray anti-scratch coatings are going to be good enough against the abuse that small children will give these disks? Really? In what universe? They throw them in the floor all the time and sometimes just by picking them up carelessly from the floor they get scratched by making friction against the dirt in the floor. I've seen this countless times and that is why when I pick them up from the floor I do so carefully but why do we have to put up with that? I lost the count of how many discs have been lost in my family due to these problems and that is despite the fact that I'm always watching out for them carefully.

As the amount of data increases in these discs it compounds these problems due to higher density of the data pits in the surface of the disks data layers, it happened when the disks changed from CD to DVDs and with Blu-Rays it is worst and for a higher density multilayer disks it could be very bad too. The anti-scratch coating will handle scratches better than the dirt in the surface to begin with but there will still be problems for both things even with that.

And this is not a problem for consumers only, why do you think that franchises like Blockbuster or Videoavenue buy professional scratch removal disk surface polishing machines and use them all the time or haven't you seem them? These machines do a great job but they cost hundreds of dollars (contrary to those consumer level ones that cost about $30.00 dollars that do not really work). The same for owners of those DVD disks serving machines at K-mart and software and game selling stores that resell used disks like GameStop. Yes they too use these machines all the time.

You want to talk about a real advance in disk technology? You give us the consumers a disk that is smaller so it can fit into a pocket (or in a lady's purse with ease) and that have a protective shell like those old floppy disks had or like those that those old 128 megabytes 3 inch optical disks had and don't tell me that that would be too expensive because floppys were a dime a dozen even with their shells and their little protective sliding doors and these media always start with a high price and then drops to nothing in a short period of time. Better yet, give the disks the anti-scratch coating together with the protective shell in case the darned little door opens accidentally cause it does happens sometimes.

So the next time around you manufacturers, use the darned multilayer disk technology but with a smaller disk with a protective shell. Now you manufacturers think, and you have lot's of engineers that are capable of thinking don't you? If a 5.25 inch disk looks too big already today how do you think that it will look a few years down the road when MicroSD cards and portable media players have two, three or many times more the capacity that they have today?

In my opinion because of these omissions the Blu-ray format was obsolete and seriously flawed from the get go. I would have rather waited a few more years for a smaller, multi-layered shell protected disk. We consumers are sick and tired of dealing with these issues so you manufacturers when you decide to create the next generation disc format please handle these issues for the consumers and for everybody else once and for all.

Oh and by the way, remember that you yourselves and all your family members and friends will be using the new discs that you create or you don't have Playstations or similar things at your homes? so think about that too. Fix this and that would be a real advance, for everybody.