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100 Terabyte 3.5-inch Optical Storage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the finally-enough-room-for-all-our-pr0n dept.

ignipotentis writes "According to PhysOrg we are close to being able to record our entire lives on a single 3.5" optical disc. This article talks about using ultraviolet light since focused laser beam is smaller in diameter than other frequencies of light. The expected cost per drive upon production is $570-$750 with discs costing $45."

9 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Graphics inaccuracies by nstrom · · Score: 5, Informative

    The graphic in the article says 10 petabyte, not 100 terabyte. That's a factor of 100 different.

    Also, the second graphic refers to Seagate and "Maxstor"... perhaps they mean Maxtor?

    If Colossal Storage Corp. can't even get their infographics right, I don't know what that says about their ability to make these drives.

    1. Re:Graphics inaccuracies by Mark_in_Brazil · · Score: 5, Informative

      No kidding. Lots of red flags in this article.
      Besides the graphic problems described by the parent post (and "COLOSSAL" in big letters on the drive in the linked cheesy graphic in the PhysOrg article) and Colossal's oh-so-cheesy animated gif-filled site, there are pseudoscience-y claims:
      "Michael invented and patented the world's first and only concept for non-contact UV photon induced electric field poling of ferroelectric non-linear photonic bandgap crystals"
      "He was invited to present this fascinating discovery to the National Science Foundation in February 2004."
      Puh-leeze. The "science" part sounds like something from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the NSF bit sounds like something out of a cheesy Hollywood script.

      And when we get right down to it, how reliable a source is PhysOrg? This, for example, doesn't strike me as the kind of news one would find on a really serious physics site...

      --Mark

      --
      "It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
  2. Colossal Storage Corp.'s Website by nstrom · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.colossalstorage.net/ -- it's pretty ghetto, in a circa 1996 sort of way. Animated GIFs abound.

  3. Re:How fragile is stored data? by simcop2387 · · Score: 3, Informative

    well not just radiation, if it is just a single molocule, what prevents entropy from scrambling the data? all you'd have to do is heat it and boom its all scrambled

  4. Re:How fragile is stored data? by scrod · · Score: 3, Informative

    Existing magnetic drives already write bits multiple times in succession to guard against corruption, and CD technology has error correction as part of the standard.

  5. Re:How fragile is stored data? by scrod · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, This paper would suggest that such a ferroelectric disk would be resistant to stray electromagnetic fields.

  6. It has been done by mangu · · Score: 5, Informative

    There's a rather old technology for doing a spawn/merge of your body together with somebody else's. There's some additional details, with graphics, here.

  7. Complete balderdash. by argent · · Score: 3, Informative

    make me wonder if either an editor of PhysOrg had a fun time being bought off

    From other evidence it looks like PhysOrg is part of the scam. Have you read their "whitepaper"?

    The holographic optical drive will use the Einstein/Planck Theory of Energy Quantum Electrons to control molecular properties by an atom's electron movement/displacement. The FeDrive - FeHead Semiconductor Integrated Optical Read / Write Head plans to use lenseless Ultraviolet/Blue laser diodes with Voltage transducer to write, new definition of the term include photon induced electrical field poling...

    "Those words, I don't think they mean what they think they mean"

    Disclaimer: IANAP, but I try to keep my chops in 20 years after leaving college.

  8. Re:Vaporware? by Bender_ · · Score: 3, Informative

    Judging from the article, it sounds as if the drive would require a 50nm laser source. There are no cheap semiconductor lasers available for this length and never will be. And I doubt you'd want to have an excimer laser in your data drive. In addition to that it would imply that the disk has to be read in vacuum... Veeery fishy.

    In addition I refard physorg.com as a highly unprofessional site. They spam the usenet and various web forums a lot. They also have the nerve to steal entire threads(!!) from the usenet and insert them to their forum, so it looks populated.