TDK Develops New Optical Disc That Holds 1 Terabyte of Data

[btarunr]

Late last week, TDK demonstrated its technological prowess by displaying the prototype of a new optical disc that can hold 1 TB of data. The unnamed disc type holds data on both its sides, each with 16 recording layers, each layer holding 32 GB of data. Physically, the disc has the same diameter as today's CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs at 12 cm, but is said to have double the thickness of a Blu-ray disc. It uses the same materials used in making Blu-ray discs, and also uses the same numerical aperture value of 0.85, which indicates that a player of this new medium should be able to read Blu-ray discs, too.

Many of Blu-ray's technologies (such as its video format) can also be ported to this new medium. As for propagation of the standard, TDK says that its creation is intended to be a highly proliferated standard, accessible to all classes of users from home entertainment to enterprise archival. The company, however, believes that manufacturers (of media, disc drives, and players) will have to play a bigger role in its commercialization. "Its commercialization depends on disc manufacturers," TDK said. Earlier this year, the Blu-ray disc association approved standardization of BDXL, an evolved Blu-ray disc that can hold 128 GB of data, an eighth of what this new disc can hold.



Source: TechON

[RejZoR]

Optical mediums are long dead if you ask me. Haven't installed a single game in the last 1 or 2 years from a CD/DVD except those that i bought long ago, haven't burned anything for a year, i store MP3's on USB drive for my car...
I can only see potential use only in the console world where such mediums are still the basic data medium. And partially movies, but who really buys them on optical mediums? They are either too restricted or too expensive...

[AsRock]

plus the fact HDD space as increased so much people just store it or even just download it when needed as you have places like Steam or D2D as isp's just keep getting faster and faster..


BUT maybe it will give blu ray some competition and not be 8 times more expensive.

[Steevo]

The more data, the more layers the more prone to scratching errors.

[MikeX]

unless a game that comes in ridiculously high texture resolution and ended up 1 terabytes. Today I could backup many harddrives with "this". How slow is the write speed?? An 1x bluray = 4.5MB a sec. It would take about 60 hours to fill at 1x

[claylomax]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

Optical mediums are long dead if you ask me. Haven't installed a single game in the last 1 or 2 years from a CD/DVD except those that i bought long ago, haven't burned anything for a year, i store MP3's on USB drive for my car...
I can only see potential use only in the console world where such mediums are still the basic data medium. And partially movies, but who really buys them on optical mediums? They are either too restricted or too expensive...

Well, dead for you; I never keep pictures, documents or videos on my pc because the risk is there no matter which AV you have and hard drives can fail sometimes; I reinstall windows every four months roughly and it's easier when you don't need to back up anything. I never heard of a virus that jumps from a computer to a desktop draw to infect cd's or dvd's. Edit: and I don't use Steam.

[ERazer]

Originally Posted by RejZoR

Optical mediums are long dead if you ask me. Haven't installed a single game in the last 1 or 2 years from a CD/DVD except those that i bought long ago, haven't burned anything for a year, i store MP3's on USB drive for my car...
I can only see potential use only in the console world where such mediums are still the basic data medium. And partially movies, but who really buys them on optical mediums? They are either too restricted or too expensive...

come to think of it i too havent used any cd/dvd for awhile now, got steam, got my win7 in USB, plug my mp3 in my car, and have home sever for my important files (prons)

[Mindweaver]

for the right price i would buy this! A 50pk for around 25 bucks, but anything higher and i will pass.

[ariff_tech]

I still listen to music coming from black plastic disc, that used needle that can vibrate and produce sound. It has been in this world for very long time, still refuse to go away.

But the solid state drive is more reliable, rugged, fast and low power.

PS: That needle cost me more than 46inch lcd TV.

[Completely Bonkers]

I think this is amazing. So much information storable in such a small, lightweight, transportable medium. We have come along way in the last 20 years.

And - looking at picture - is this thing really transparent?

I can see many uses for this - just not for me though.

[bear jesus]

To be honest i still prefer the idea of buying more hard drives for backing up data, at the current cost per gb and the fact they all have a nice metal shell makes me a lot more comfortable than a disk that i will scratch.... yes i know its my own fault for not being careful enough with my disks but i don't even have an optical drive plugged into my pc, the only time i do plug one in is for a new os install.

[DannibusX]

This makes more sense for a business that needs to back up their data on optical medium. It'd help keep their back ups more organized.

Hell, my friends business used to back up to zip drive and after a while that became a clusterf**k.

[Bundy]

I have pretty much moved on from optical storage to using HDD back up. For me, a 1TB optical disk has limited use.

[dir_d]

This will be huge for enterprise backups. I work for a defense contractor and we just got audited for files over 8 years ago. Id love to have disks instead of tapes that die on me randomly.

[bear jesus]

Originally Posted by DannibusX

This makes more sense for a business that needs to back up their data on optical medium. It'd help keep their back ups more organized.

Hell, my friends business used to back up to zip drive and after a while that became a clusterf**k.

Originally Posted by dir_d

This will be huge for enterprise backups. I work for a defense contractor and we just got audited for files over 8 years ago. Id love to have disks instead of tapes that die on me randomly.

This is proberley where the real market for these types of disks will be, i doubt many home users would need to backup that much data (i assume dvd or blueray would hold enough for many) and a lot of peolpe who do would just buy more hard drives.

[Hayder_Master]

awesome, 2 cd's to backup your important data, that's great

[TheLaughingMan]

Well This is expected. Optical disc tech will be here for a while. A lot of companies store important information on these things. 50 years of sales records get dumped on a DVD, vacuum sealed and stuck in storage. They are still more reliable than HDD or mechanical medium. SSD's will take that job position in a few more years.

The good things is if this is a manufacturing advancement, or a data encoding enhancement, the tech can be adapted to Blu-rays instead of trying to replace it (or I may be reading the article wrong). A 32 GB and 64 GB (single and dual layer respectively) blu-ray could be nice. The extra space means better or more audio tracks for movies/series. Or simply a few more episodes per disk for TV series and anime, further reducing cost to make. That means either better quality stuff for us, or cheaper stuff when it comes to those series.

This is nothing compared to a holographic disc (6 TB discs), but those muthas are expensive to make. If they keep this up, then may make HVD's obsolete before we even get commercial versions of them.

[bear jesus]

I just remembered "Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) (or Ultra HDTV, 4320p, 8K, and Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV))" as in the future HD format that is 7680 × 4320 res, with such a massive res i wonder if these new discs would find a use there?

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

There 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.

[naram-sin]

Optical discs could be the only viable data backup solution in case of an EMP.

It seems to me that discarding of optical media technology would/could be disastrous in the long run.

[Lipton]

Originally Posted by [H]@RD5TUFF

There 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.

I take it you don't watch Blu-rays and play on consoles then. :P

Originally Posted by bear jesus

I just remembered "Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) (or Ultra HDTV, 4320p, 8K, and Ultra High Definition Video (UHDV))" as in the future HD format that is 7680 × 4320 res, with such a massive res i wonder if these new discs would find a use there?

Indeed, 8K is about 16 times the resolution of today's 1080p, and ~50 GB times 16 is ~800 GB. It's a nice step up indeed and would fill the shoes of Blu-ray just perfectly for the next generation of HD. Wouldn't wanna stream that just yet.

That is, if the price is right.

Originally Posted by RejZoR

Optical mediums are long dead if you ask me. Haven't installed a single game in the last 1 or 2 years from a CD/DVD except those that i bought long ago, haven't burned anything for a year, i store MP3's on USB drive for my car...
I can only see potential use only in the console world where such mediums are still the basic data medium. And partially movies, but who really buys them on optical mediums? They are either too restricted or too expensive...

Dead??! hahahaha! You're really funny, you know that?

I cannot wait to hear you again after your HDDs broke down and you've lost hundreds of gigs...

[amschip]

Guys 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.

[amschip]

Originally Posted by TAViX

Dead??! hahahaha! You're really funny, you know that?

I cannot wait to hear you again after your HDDs broke down and you've lost hundreds of gigs...

He's actually right its easy to buy 2 1.5TB drives for 200Euro and mirror them using software rather than raid. I have such setup and it works fine. if one craps out on me I'll buy another one. How long will it take to reburn another of those?

Edit:
Also consider this 10euro a piece for 50GB BD-R would cost you 300Euro for 1.5TB of data I can add 3rd drive to my setup for that

[inferKNOX]

Originally Posted by naram-sin

Optical discs could be the only viable data backup solution in case of an EMP.

It seems to me that discarding of optical media technology would/could be disastrous in the long run.

Exactly 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.