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Mega-DVDs -- 100GB Apiece
saitouhajime writes: "Matsushita is reporting that they've developed a method of storing 100 Gigabytes onto a standard sized dvd. Articles can be found here(1) and here(2)." 100GB on a disk would be a nice way to store backups -- but since the DVD consortium hasn't made any promises, this format may remain just a demo technology forever.
They discovered Winzip?
The article says that to achieve 100GB, the disc has to be double sided.. So presumably most of the media we see will actually only have a 50GB capacity.
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Is this just a gimmick by companies to get funding or something?
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For backups at least ina profesionnal environement you need more speed. writting DVD is slow compared to technologies like LTO, which stores up to 200 Gig on a casette.Archives which you write and then store somewhere in a safe palce because You personaly don't need the data, are better stored on worm devices like DVD's. French quality commette recommends Worm device writting for archives you need to keep for the IRS.
none Yet.
First: It a sad thing *ANY* article on slashdot is consumed by dog shit posts. 20 comments already attached to this article and not a damn one has anything to say.
That said the real story here is the wavelength change. Normal CD's are red lasers. DVD's are blue. This thing is VIOLET. The shorter the light wave, the more dense the data can be. So this is big news because it is a new level of technology, not a progression of one of the current technologies. (Without question some form of this will be adopted)
This means that some of the recent tricks (multi-layers) will probably be applicable to this to yield a VERY high amount of storage, maybe 100-200GB per side. That is of course if they don't come out with an ULTRA-VIOLET laser based system first. (Uhmm does an ultra-violet laser even exist yet??)
OK guys we're at 50GB per platter now. Give me random I/O of 4ms, and I'll chuck my magnetic HD's out of the window.
{Name} from {site} wrote in to tell us about a new [disc/disk/cd/drive/toaster] that can hold [10/100/1000/5000] [MB/GB/TB/PB] and is backward compatible with [nothing/5 1/2" floppy drives/iomega clik!]. The new format is only [.25/1/5] [mm/inches/yards] across and is resistant to [scratches/heat/proton decay]. Unfortunately, due to [patents/liscensing issues/censorship] from [MS/USPS/IBM/Disney] this will probably never get off the ground. Guess I'll stick to using [DVD-RAM/punch cards/LS-120] for now.
This is apparently an optical multiple read/write format, not just a SDVD-R type of thing... And there's several companies who have developed almost the same thing, which means that a standard might be decided much quicker than before...
Not to mention that this should also cause DVD-R drives to finally come down within reach!
If God gave us curiosity
Warning: I am making the possibly misguided assumption that this new technology is based on "blue laser" wavelengths".
I have long since wondered when blue laser technology would fit into the "grand scheme" of data storage needs. Standards serve both to implemement existing technology as soon as possible in order to acquire more investment dollars, and in order to ensure compatibility with existing and established markets and products. However, standards also serve to hamper technological advancements. Just look at the X86 architecture (or whatever it's called). On the other hand, standards also ensure compatibility with a wide variety of manufacturers and products. They generally make our lives much easier.
I believe that in order to push this new technology, and also to provide compatibility with the existing infrastructure, early developers of this technology will have to make some compromises. These compromises will be most notable in the actual user-cost. My reasoning being, is that they will have to make their product with two different lasers. One that uses the blue wavelength, and one that uses the old DVD standard. This will increase the cost untill they can figure a way to use a single laser to do both, like Sony has done with their Playstation2. I think this format has the potential to do very well, except for the standards issue. If the general public can accept the early high costs of this technology and view it as a true leap, it will quickly become cheaper and more usefull. If not, then it will die a quick death, and be thrown towards a niche category like perhaps the Minidisc is in America. Standards are again, both a blessing and a curse.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
For those of you not in the know, Matsushita is the Japanese parent company of Panasonic.
With all of the other fanciful storage media (FMD, anyone), we're talking about tiny start-up companies that are throwing (usually) empty promises out about their newest gizmo because, let's face it, they'll do anything to jack the stock price a little.
I would feel safe in making a bet that we would never, ever see widespread use of FMD (maybe something similar, but probably never FMD). I just don't think a company that small would have the financial resources to tangle with the big boys on something as big as a common media storage format.
Meanwhile I sit here looking at my Panasonic television. I saw their Home theater DVD-R unit at the electronics store today for $1K. Call me crazy, but I just find this claim a little more legit than most.
Maybe I'm just being an optimist, but it would be really cool to use this for High Definition DVDs. Heck, it wouldn't even cost more (besides the drive mechanics) because by that time most TVs will have to accept HD over the air, so over the firewire is cheap!
A real marketing manager would describe this product as a "Terabyte-DVD" *
* CAPACITY DISCLAIMER: Holds up to 1 terabyte assuming all files are compressed 10:1 with a third-party compression utility. Compression utility not included. Your actual compressed capacity may vary. Not all files are compressable.
MPAA Meeting: Great, so now we have to give those ungrateful consumers higher quality video with less compression... no screw that, lets just put 40GBs of copy-protection systems on.
I would actually _pay_ (yes, me actually pay real money) for DVDs that used all this capacity to give me extra high-quality data with less compression. Instead of downloading crappy DivX'ed versions. Seeing DVDs now, i don't understand how anyone could be fooled into thinking they are high-quality, the artifacts are terrible
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I think it's about time that a company has a long-term, high-capacity data solution that is suitable for the average home user. Tapes are still much too much.
Tapes are also by no stretch of the imagination, "long-term".
I think that Matsushita's announcement of the 100 GB 5.25" optical disk designed close to the Sony-Phillips proposal could mean an agreement by this super-capacity DVD could come may be the fall of 2002.
Remember, today's DiVX format compression can store something like a 2-hour movie with near-DVD quality on a single 650 MB CD-R disc. Imagine applying next-generation video compression (now under development by the MPEG standards groups) to the new disc format; we could see 1080i HDTV movies that won't require 50 GB's of storage space per disc side--imagine storing the entire Godfather] trilogy in 1080i wide screen format on a single-sided disc including all the extras.
I can also guess that a recordable version of this new disk could store around 85 GB in a disk format similar to the old optical disk formats from the early 1990's. With today's improved optical disk recording technologies and the availability of better I/O interfaces such as SCSI Ultra-Wide 160/320 and Fibre Channel, imagine a whole bank of these new optical disk drives backing up large HD arrays in a small fraction of the time that tape backup systems require.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Why do developers do this? Sheesh. The way to PROPERLY do cookies is to send ONE. The contents of that ONE cookie will be a HASH, which is your session ID. Then the CGI should get the actual data for that session ID from the server itself (and store it there too). Sheesh.
While it has been mentioned that this possibly could be vaporware (or vapourware, if you prefer) the trade off for such a large capacity is usually speed.
:)
I've read thru all the post and that point is usually missed.
Take CD's for instance, when they could be described as "languishing" at 650/700M for a long time, DVD-RAM (commonly called opticals or MO drives/disks at the time) carried 4 to 5.2G of storage. The trade off has always been speed.
CD's were hitting the 20X speeds while MO/Opticals were "languishing" at a max of 4X speed, or there abouts.
Now tape drives are another story. I've recently gone thru the hell of restoring from a DLT7K in a dell powervault...the restore took 7+ hours for 6 or so files that did not total a few dozen Mb.
This is unacceptable for data archival/retrieval, IMO.
To top it all off, it took 3 days and many calls to *ell's techs to get *nowhere*.
Now, if a "jukebox" could be made with 16 drives of 100G capacity via Gb ethernet, fiber, or connect to an UW scsi that would kick arse.
IF searching took less than an hour over that *entire* unit...it would be a godsend.
Think about 1.6Tb of storage! Combine that with what pinnacle micro did with their jukeboxes...used a hard drive to cache directory info and frequently accessed files to take care of some of the speed issues involved.
So much data, so little time and capacity to hold it all.
I hope these 100G disks/drives do come to fruition, because that will mean at the very least that the 5.2G disks will finally drop in price.
(my sig is a voice in the wilderness to all metamoderators)
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Compare apples to apples, please. An "X" for a CD-ROM drive is 150KB/s. I don't know what an "X" is for a DVD drive, but I'm pretty darned certain that it's more then that, because my old "2X" DVD drive could play DVD's... and I *know* DVDs need more then 300KB/s to play correctly.
Why not re-write your post, using KB/s instead of "X"?
In fact, increasing the density of a drive often increases the possible speed of the drive. Sometimes (sometimes!) the constaining factor on a drive is how fast the media can be spun. Modern CD drives are pretty much at this limit; you just can't spin CD's reliably at "100X", even if you had the theoretical ability to read the data that fast. (Yes, I know no CD player comes even close to that speed; that's my point.) But if you spin the DVD at the same max speed a CD drive can spin a CD, then the DVD drive will be able to transfer significantly more quickly.
Rather then a "tradeoff" between speed and capacity, you usually get the opposite: Both coming at once. Esp. in the mature version of a technology, which is where we are now with CD players and either are, or will be within months, for DVD players.