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Pioneer Ultraviolet Laser Promises 500GB Discs

Posted by samzenpus on from the i-love-lasers dept.

No Fortune writes "Here's an article indicating that Pioneer is developing an ultraviolet laser for data storage. Since the wavelength of ultraviolet lasers is shorter than the wavelength of blue lasers, the beams are finer and they can pack more data into per square inch. This gives a data rate 20 times more than the blue laser Blue-ray disk."

17 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. warning: CD encountered a tiny dust mote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    error correcting 15.8 megabytes of obscured data!

  2. Bit Rot? by abrotman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So now i can lose 500GB of data?

    I'm moving to punchcards ...

    1. Re:Bit Rot? by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Someone already moderated you funny, but I think it's a real issue. Sure, use UV if it helps, but I would rather have them make the bits a little bigger and a lot more reliable than as small as they can get them and have them rot away. I could live with 100 gig of data on a disc if I could trust it a lot more than 500 gigs on one disc I can't trust.

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    2. Re:Bit Rot? by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather them pack as many bits onto the disc as possible, then apply a reasonable error correction scheme to allow for significantly greater damage before data loss occurs.

      Put another way, if you can fit 500G on a disc, you can fit 20 copies of a Blu-Ray disc, so when the first one dies, you have 19 spares. Admittedly, I'm not looking for something -quite- that extreme, but the potential for such high-density optical media in terms of improving reliability is tremendous if the vendors just had the guts to use it for that instead of saying "Ooh, we can fit all 17 seasons of The Simpsons on one disc".

      Just my $0.02.

      --

      Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

    3. Re:Bit Rot? by schtum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather them pack as many bits onto the disc as possible, then apply a reasonable error correction scheme...

      It's not just you. The grandparent suggested making each bit in the disc larger than normal. You suggest duplicating each bit several times. Put the duplicate bits in a row instead of randomly scattered (reducing seek time when they are needed) and your solutions are virtually identical.

      Then again, scattering the bits would make the disc more robust, since one scratch would be less likely to wipe out a given bit and all of it's duplicates. So... yeah. Go patent that. =)

    4. Re:Bit Rot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      if the vendors just had the guts to use it for that instead of saying "Ooh, we can fit all 17 seasons of The Simpsons on one disc".

      The venders don't want to stick more stuff on each disk. They want to spread it out so they can sell you more disks. It's more likely that they'd plop the video on uncompressed and boast about incredible image quality.

    5. Re:Bit Rot? by Paraplex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd push for the case to be built into the disc, ala 3 1/4 inch floppies. Not the ugly original model, but a much more elegant solution. (round, slim) opening and closing cases and removing CDs is a complete waste of time. Most of my CDs end up stacked on a spool and alot end up rotting/scratched as a result. Redundancy is a 'nice' solution, but a good old fashioned built in protective case might make reduncancy er.. redundant...

      --
      Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
  3. I was wondering when this was going to happen by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful
    How long is it going to take them to pack it into a consumer device? That's always been the real question. Maybe there's no point to blu-ray.

    Now that I've paused to read the article...

    The article only discusses write techniques. I'd like to hear if there are any peculiarities involved in reading it before I make guesses as to the delay before production. I'd also like to know if they only have a tube or if they have a diode already.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Protective cover or lots of redundant information by 3770 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    These should really come in some type of protective casing. Like a floppy or something.

    I have many CD's and they were pretty resilient to scratches. They played fine even if they had a pretty hefty scratch on them.

    Then I bought DVD's and I brought them on over sea flights for entertainment. I was transporting them in one of those CD wallets and they just started getting unusable really fast. The smallest scratch and it would stop working.

    I'm thinking that these disks can get a scratch that is smaller than can be seen with the naked eye and it'll still be a real problem for the disk.

    So they should either have a protective cover like a floppy or they should have lots of redundant information physically far away from each other on the disk.

    --
    The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
  5. Re:Editors please make up your mind! by haruchai · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When you're referring to hard drives, it's disk. When referring to CDs or other removable media, it's disc except when referring to floppies in which case it's diskette. FYI, there isn't a "discette" - yet

    Hope this clears it up for you.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  6. to preserve or not preserve by spiffistan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We're missing a big point in all this: We need better ways of preserving data, not better ways of storing more data.

    --
    does our rule benefit the earth? does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine?

  7. Re:Non-plastic disks? by Richard+Allen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know ... maybe corn? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/05/002420 6&tid=198&tid=188&tid=126&tid=1

  8. Re:Oh yeah? Well mine uses Gamma Rays! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why don't we all just kill ourselves - the world will eventually end, why all the incremental generations of humans?

  9. The Bigger the Data, the Harder the Fall by RonBurk · · Score: 2, Insightful
    We used to use a Sony Mavica to take pictures on floppy disks. That made for a stack of floppies after a week or two of vacation, but not unmanageable. Then, technology gave us a Sony camera that could record on optical disc. Woohoo! Instead of a stack of floppies, one disc (or 2 at worst) could cover an entire vacation.

    When we lost a floppy disk, we only lost 20 pictures at most. Alas, when we lost an optical disc, we lost an entire vacation's worth of pictures.

    When media data storage rates double, reliability needs to double too!

    1. Re:The Bigger the Data, the Harder the Fall by unsupported · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Reliability? Just don't lose the shit.

      -Un

      --
      Yopu for you?
  10. Okay, now the problem is speed by DongleFondle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's great that we can have 500 GB cheap optical disks and all, but aren't we reaching something of a bottleneck when it comes to disk access and writing? If it takes you an hour to write a 4.5 Gig dvd like it does me, then your looking at 4 days, 15 hours to write one of these babies. KEH'MON!

  11. What I can't understand is why HDD hold as much by baker_tony · · Score: 3, Insightful
    How come a HDD with several platters still haven't reached 500GB yes (that I'm aware of), but a "DVD" recorded with light can!? I would've thought that the lazer would've been much wider than the magnetic tracks on a HDD platter.

    Is it simply because a DVD is a lot wider than a HDD platter?