Iomega Patents 850GB DVD Nano-Technology

Mike writes "US Patent & Trademark Office recently issued a patent to Iomega Corp. for its work with nano-technology and optical data storage. New technology, called Articulated Optical - DVD will allow 40-100 times more data (upto 850 Gb) to be stored on a DVD with data transfer rates 5-30 times faster than today's DVDs, and at similarly low costs. AO - DVD is a novel technique of encoding data on the surface of a DVD by using reflective nano-structures to encode data in a highly multi-level format."

Comments

Space abundance

[Council]

The inevitable situation is that we will have unlimited space -- that is, more than we can fill. So what happens when we can quite easily put every piece of digital media we've ever even thought about owning -- all the movies, all the games -- on a single disk, without ever having to delete anything?

I really don't know -- it's an interesting question, both similar and dependent on the question of what happens when we have bandwidth abundance. I don't know the answer. What do you think?

One thing that I think is likely is that we will stop trying to organize our data with a tree metaphor and move more toward a search-based system, like how iTunes organizes music. It seems a likely possibility.

DVD's as backup

[phorm]

(some of these apply to tape as well)

a) Burn times are a big factor here, sure 850GB is great... but not if it takes almost a day for a backup run. Current DVD burning is fairly fast though... so hopefully we get good speeds (5-30 times faster than today's DVDs sounds promising)

b) If (a) works out well, and discs don't cost a crapload... you can burn multiple DVD's just in case of disc-rot. Store both in good conditions. Media is still subject to reliability, but many a company has relied on tapes as well only to find them demagnetized, etc at restore time (TEST those tapes, people).

c) Storage space could be saved big-time with this, and a multi-disk burner could be fairly easy to setup too

d) Tapes may not rot as easily, but DVD's don't get mad if you post 'em up using hard-drive magnets :-)