87GB On DVD-Sized Media

BostonMACOSX points to this report in the Detroit News that says, in part, "Boston College researchers have found a way to store about 19 times more data on a disk than a common DVD can hold, using optical media made with common products, the December issue of Nature Materials reports." And it's a mix of high and low tech: the disk is formed of "an epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance," but written with a currently expensive laser.

Comments

Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS?

[GigsVT]

And the more important question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.

I think we may be doomed to never have large capacity disposable/cheap removable media.

When will consumers see this technology?

[g00z]

You know, I've been waiting a damn long time for a optical storage solution that catches up to the size the will make backing up todays hard drives (40 Gigs and Up) a realistic possibility. 700 Megs just isn't cutting the mustard anymore when were talking about trying to back up 200+ Gigs worth of data.

I Currently have about 1.4 TB of data sitting here in my room on CD-R right now, and let me tell you -- it's getting out of hand. DVD writables are not a solution (Too little, too late theory). I would love nothing more than to consolidate the 13 200 CD Cases I have here into something a little bit more compact.

I've seen a couple of companies working on something like this (Optical CD-Sized solution that stores around 100 GB). Anybody have any theories to when the common dude can roll down to compusa (pick your posion) and snag a few blank 100 GB Disks for a reasonable price? I'm starting to feel like it's 1995 again when a 1.4M Floppy disk was as good as it got.

I need something like this.

[Blimey85]

Then I need an mp3 player for my car that can use this type of media. My entire music collection on one disc. All those thousands of dollars on one disc. Hmm... would seem like such a waste at that point.

Think of the uses for this though. Being able to back up all of my servers to a single disc without compressing anything. That would be a great time saver. And then there are the not-so-legal-but-who-cares-we're-all-going-to-die- eventually-anyway uses... like storing all the episodes of shows that aren't released on dvd in the US (Family Guy for one).

But how much would they cost per disc and how much for the burner? While dvd burners are getting pretty cheap now, the media still isn't as cheap as I would like it.

So...If I understand this....

[GeneralEmergency]

...it means that when all the LOTR movies are done, we can REALLY piss off Jack Valenti by ripping them on to just one disk?

Must go buy more popcorn now.

Common [ ] products

[Matey-O]

My brain inserted 'household' between Common and products. I got real excited when I thought something like Lemon Plegde would allow me to store more data on a DVD...

...kinda like taking a hole punch to a SSDD 5 1/4 floppy.

(ya see, when _I_ was your age, floppy disks were actually bigger, and floppy, not 3.5" on a side and 'stiff')

Too bad about the expensive laser

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

Though it may placate the MPAA/RIAA a bit :)

On another topic, I hate shit like:

"...equal to 87,000 paperback books."

My mother in law knows what a gigabyte is. I think it's safe to stop with the point-of-reference crap.

Re:Too bad about the expensive laser

[sharkey]

"...equal to 87,000 paperback books."

You also have to wonder what is being left out of the transcription of, say "War and Peace", to make it use the same amount of disk-space as "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".

Re:Too bad about the expensive laser

[micromoog]

When did "paperback books" replace "Libraries of Congress"? Is this part of the U.S. metric system changeover?

Word of Caution:

[Quaoar]

Take it from me...pouring epoxy glue on a DVD does not increase the storage capacity.

so what?

[io333]

I've been seeing reports of stuff like this for at least two years. Wasn't there someone just a few months ago, probably reported here... hang on a sec...

yea here it is.

Anyway, I've been seeing reports like this forever, but zero consumer products. When something hits the market, I'll be interested. Until then I don't care.

Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS?

[Blimey85]

"My fellow Americans...

You will be happy to know that today,
I wrote into law legislation that will ban the RIAA forever.

The bombing will start in 5 minutes." - Former President Ronal Reagan
speaking on behalf of the US Air Force in response to the RIAA saying no.

Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS?

[IanBevan]

I think we may be doomed to never have large capacity disposable/cheap removable media.

I disagree. We will, because we can. It's human nature. It's why the RIAA is destined to fail to control all digital entertainment media in the same way that the suffragettes (sp ?) eventually got the vote. It makes sense, most people want it, and therefore it will happen.

I have a similar theory that I apply to my everyday working life (software development projects); given enough time, common sense will prevail.

Remember the 'Scotch Tape Drive'?

[Jack William Bell]

This seems pretty similar to the 'Scotch Tape Drive' where they were getting 10 gigabytes of data onto a roll of adhesive tape using a laser in much the same way.

Jack William Bell

Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS?

[Syncdata]

would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen
Okay, this is just silly. The RIAA is not omnipotent. They cannot stop DVD-R's from being produced just because it has the capability to store a movie, nor can they stop Hard Disks from being produced, for the same reason.
The RIAA/MPAA is pissed because there are applications out there whose main use (not necessarily intended, but main use) is distributing copyrighted material illegally. They won't sue dell for shipping computers with ethernet connections, just because they facilitate downloading music. Press the pause button on the conspiracy theories.

When the tech industry

[FreeUser]

And the more important question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.

When the Tech Industry creates its own, well funded PAC a la the NRA and starts outbribing the Hollywood Cartels in Washington. The tech industry is orders of magnitude larger than the consumer electronics industry, which in turn is an order of magnitude larger than Hollywood and the Recording industry put together.

Thanks for bringing it up

[cryptochrome]

Yeah, what he said. Not only that, this new tech sounds remarkably similar - it also involves flourescence at multiple layers. Of course c-3d's players would have been fully backwards compatible. Or alternately, wouldn't have even needed a laser per se, just coherent light.

However anyone that's worked with flourescent compounds knows that eventually they will bleach. I have a strong suspicion that this may have been what killed c-3d, and it's possible it may prove to be an intractable problem with this new tech as well, although they say it doesn't degrade. We shall see.

(For the record, I think c-3d's FMCs - a card-sized non-rotating version of FMDs - were their best idea. Exposed disks are too easily damaged and distinctly kid-unfriendly, and the normal sized disk is too large to carry in a pocket. CDs and DVDs got this very, very wrong.)

Blu-Ray?

[tedDancin]

What is happening with Blu-Ray, the DVD format that nine members of the DVD forum supported earlier this year? Blu-Ray uses a 405nm blue-violet laser, and can hold up to 27GB on a single-sided single-layer disc. While the capacity is not as great, the commercial support is.

I think I'll wait on this format (that has the backing of Hitachi, Sony, Pioneer, Philips etc etc) before going out on a limb with any epoxy solution.

Useless for recording applications

[Cutie Pi]

I fail to see the value of this technology for several reasons. The recording medium is not so much the issue in optical media. The bigger issue is the optics, specifically the laser. Why aren't 100GB Blu-ray DVD-ROMS in our computers right now? It's because the blue lasers in them cost > $2K right now. It's not because the technology isn't there to cheaply make the reflecting layers and organic dyes.

So what do these guys do? They decide to reinvent the recording medium, only their medium is inferior because it can't be stamped. And that means their discs can't be mass-produced. To top it all off, they use a laser that costs $100,000, or 50X that of the Blu-ray laser.

These guys have a product that:
1) Has lower storage capacity than Blu-ray
2) Costs 50X more than Blu-ray
3) Uses an inferior recording medium compared to Blu-ray

It might be kinda nifty that they used common materials, but that fact that those materials are inferior is probably why CD's and DVD's aren't made with common materials now! It reminds me of the /. story about the researchers who measured the dielectric constant of chicken feathers and then said it could someday be used to replace the high-tech dielectric layers being used in today's microchips. Dream on guys....

gonna have to start putting them in cases

[zejackal]

I don't know about you folks, but I'm of the opinion that the CD/DVD format is on it's way out. I don't mean that CD's or DVD's are going away, simply that newer denser media won't look like those disks. The problem is this, as the spacial density of the data on the disk increases, the impact due to scratching increases. Instead of obliterating x number of bits, a scratch on a more dense media obliterates many times x bits.

This can be mitigated by using error correcting codes. The cost of these codes is that the number of bits required to represent the same amount of real data goes up. At some point on the density curve we will reach a point where the amount of error correction bits required to make the media immune to most normal scratches will equal the added amount of information storage due to a higher density.

We are already starting to see this with DVD's. How many times have you rented a DVD and it gets skippy and/or halts. Then when you eject it and look to see if it is scratched you see a few scratches that you know wouldn't even give your CD player pause were they to occur on a CD. That's because when the CD format was created they had a quarter inch rule in the standard. The error correction had to be able to withstand a quarter inch hole being punched in the CD. A DVD certainly can't handle that.

What we will begin to find in our exposed media disks is that a higher and higher percentage of the available bit positions on the disk will have to be devoted to error correction. Thus a boost of n in the density won't corrispond to a boost in the actual amount of usable data stored on the disk. The solution, of course, is to put the media in a case, like a 3 1/2" disk for example. This mitigates the risk of actually scratching the disk and so we wouldn't need such a high degree of error correction. We would have those bits to store actual data in.

Re:Screw Media

[Hektor_Troy]

I need a 10t store at "Yahoo" (pick your flavor) for $5 amonth with a data access rate in the 5ms range accessable from any spot on earth

Let's see. Light travels at roughly 300,000 km/second. In .005 seconds it can travel 1,500 km.

The circumfrence of the earth is roughly 40,000 km, so the farthest you can be from a given spot is 20,000 km.

Add to that, that you also need to send the request, you somehow need to think up a transport medium, that can travel at 20,000 km / 0.0025 seconds == 8,000,000 km/second.

We'll get in tuch with you, when we manage to send data at 26 and 2/3rds the speed of light at a distance of 20,000 km.