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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."

60 of 422 comments (clear)

  1. Cool by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Corporate Data for small buisness on one Disk. Who needs tape anymore

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:Cool by PenguinBoyDave · · Score: 2, Informative

      Tape is Dead. Long Live Tape. CD's and DVD's are dashboard technology. They were designed to fit in your car radio (the CD's anyway). They have no protection from scratches, etc. and a fifty-cent piece of media insn't designed to hold your companies crown jewels. I once sold a backup solution to a company who decided to go with DVD's rather than tape for the cost of the media alone. Three months later someone moving the dvd platter dropped it on the way to the vault. The DVD's that hit the floor and got scratched up was data that was not replaceable. But the time they figured out what they lost it was too late. a Company that had been in business 20 years was out of business because of one mistake and cheap media. I'd feel better putting my data on redundant hard drives or tape than on a DVD.

      --
      I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
    2. Re:Cool by cafard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What about making as many copies as baskets you require then?

      --
      This post is awesome.
    3. Re:Cool by gunnk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Have you ever dropped a DLT?

      Someone over in our Comp Sci department did that a few years ago. It looked okay, though, so it went back on the shelf.

      Next time they ran a restore from the tape it destroyed the DLT drive. Unfortunately, they thought the drive was the problem, not the tape, so they stuck the tape in a backup drive... oops.

      The example you gave also has a couple of others problems:

      1 - No matter what media you use you NEVER rely on one copy as the only copy of your data. If you do, it is NOT a BACKUP.

      2 - A DVD out of it's case is easy to scratch up. Of course, magnetic tape has a pretty short lifespan out of its case as well -- the difference is only that the tape goes into the drive CASE AND ALL. When you put your backup tape in a case you are really putting your tape + case into a second protective case. I've actually seen drives that do the same thing for optical disks. It's not a bad idea for critical backups.

      --
      Life is short: void the warranty.
    4. Re:Cool by /ASCII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, I've heard BS stories like that one before. I highly doubt the parent is a true story, and if it is, this should not reflect badly on the DVD format. It is simply a case of incompetence in putting all your eggs in one basket. The same thing could have happened to a tape, which is why important data should be stored in multiple copies at multiple places.

      --
      Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
    5. Re:Cool by lowrydr310 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What about the old-school CD drives that required a protective caddy? These protected the disc from scratches.

    6. Re:Cool by Ucklak · · Score: 2, Informative

      I call BS.
      There is no way that a company can be out of business because of a bad backup. No way. Especially one in business for 20 years.

      Tape can be demagnetized.
      Oxides on the tape can deteriorate and seperate.
      Tapes are more fragile than DVD's.

      Restoring Tapes from say BackupExec or the like is a Pain In The A$$ and can take hours if done as incremental.

      Restoring tapes from a different machine other than the one that mastered it is yet another hurdle especially in a windows environment.

      Having a tape archive from years ago done in a version of backup software that isn't supported anymore and newer tape machines that can't read the older format is extremely counterproductive and isn't worthy of the 'archive' title.

      Backups and archives should be just that. Not dependant on 'current' software versions or technology.

      How do I know?
      -I've had to throw away 10 year old tapes because of software and hardware incompatabilities. The 20 year old 5.25 floppies worked but the tapes didn't.
      -Years of Backup Exec (5 to current) experience.
      -Years of NTBACKUP experience and don't even get me started on the XP version of NTBACKUP.
      -A couple of years of the CA backup software. I forget what the name is.
      -A few years of lesser known backup solutions.

      Tarballing on a DVD is fast, cheap, reliable, and easy to restore. I've never had an issue with that.

      --
      if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
    7. Re:Cool by MoonBuggy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uncompressed (or lossless), high definition video. The mass-market switch to HD digital (which should happen over the next 10-15 years, a roughly plausible timescale for the introduction of this media) is the perfect time to introduce a decent quality standard for video without any nasty artifacts or problems when recompressing (you can get a much better compressed file from a lossless source than a lossy compressed source).

  2. Hey by macaulay805 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hey, thats aboue two VW Beetle's worth of Library of Congresses to the hogs head!!!!

  3. That's a problem! .... by TomDLux · · Score: 2, Funny

    I son't HAVE that much prOn!

    1. Re:That's a problem! .... by niko9 · · Score: 2, Funny

      I son't HAVE that much prOn!

      Don't worry. I'm sure you could fill up the rest with a spell checker, dictionary, or any one of the freely available typing tutors. ;)

  4. Hmmm by buckymatters · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hopefully they'll be rewritable so I can just run my computer off it. That'd be nice, one disc for each OS.

  5. Did they also patent... by ad0gg · · Score: 3, Funny

    Making a clicking noise when it dies?

    --

    Have you ever been to a turkish prison?

    1. Re:Did they also patent... by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Funny

      Now it's nano-clicking. The sound is so small you can't even hear it.

    2. Re:Did they also patent... by dr_dank · · Score: 2, Funny

      These are much more advanced than that old iomega media of yesteryear.

      Now it'll say "Anon, I am slain" before it shits itself and takes your precious data with it.

      --
      Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
    3. Re:Did they also patent... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Funny
      Making a clicking noise when it dies?

      Yes. From the patent:

      17. The disk storage system of claim 16, where said stored data may be lost to read/write head operation failure.

      18. The disk storage system of claim 17, where said operation failure is further caused by read/write head encountering dirt or debris on underprotected cheap media format.

      19. The disk storage system of claim 18, where driver software further issues a plurality of reset commands to said read/write head in response to operation errors.

      20. The disk storage system of claim 19, where said driver software reset function further slams read/write head against mechanical stops.

      21. The disk storage system of claim 20, where said mechanical stop action further causes prominent audible clicking, thereby notifying human operator that they are SOL.
  6. Oh boy.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    My fat finger print just erased 138 Gigs of data from my DVD!

  7. Does a protoype exist? by NightWulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm reading the articles mentioning that they have been issued two patents, but is there anything tangible to these patents. So they have a working 850GB DVD using nanotech, or is this just another patent for tech that *could* be made in 2025.

    1. Re:Does a protoype exist? by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "I'm reading the articles mentioning that they have been issued two patents, but is there anything tangible to these patents. So they have a working 850GB DVD using nanotech, or is this just another patent for tech that *could* be made in 2025."

      I doubt they're thinking that far in advance. The main reason Iomega is around today is that their 100 meg zip drive came out at a time where hard drives were barely that size. They came damn close to becoming a standard must-have device until the CD-RW came around.

      Iomega would certainly LOVE to get into that market again, so I seriously doubt it'll be a 2025 thing. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it were only a couple of years away. However, you're right, there's nothing tangible right now.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    2. Re:Does a protoype exist? by cpt+kangarooski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      their 100 meg zip drive came out at a time where hard drives were barely that size

      Meh. When Zips came out, about 10 years ago, I had a 750MB drive, and that wasn't unusually large. Where Zips excelled was in price. SyQuests and Bernoullis cost a lot more.

      --
      -- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
    3. Re:Does a protoype exist? by Laurance · · Score: 2, Informative

      normally, patents require that you have atleast a working protoype

    4. Re:Does a protoype exist? by Gadzinka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      or is this just another patent for tech that *could* be made in 2025.

      No, it's a new trend: companies patent problems without a solution anticipating that some court in a couple of years will grant them license fees from someone that's going to actually put the money and effort to solve the problem.

      I remember seeing in this category patents for ethical AI[1], Sony patenting virtual reality games via ultrasound stimulation of a brain. None of this thech is or will be available in foreseeable future.

      So what?

      Fucking parasites.

      Robert

      [1] "Three laws" anyone?

      --
      Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
  8. Great! by 0kComputer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now I can get rid of my Zip drive.

    --
    Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
    10.
  9. form factor? by nilbog · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is it still on the same less-than-perfect form factor? Seriously, I have casette tapes and 8-track tapes, and VHS tapes that still work, but my DVD's skip every dang time. How about we work on something durable...?

    --
    or else!
  10. Yea well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've got a patent pending for a terrabyte DVD drive and a 100 terrabyte DVD drive. So, there!

    Of course, just like the Iomega vaporware, you can't get one of my drives yet either but, I'll have the patent Real Soon (tm). I think I'll release Duke Nukem as the first title on my new world dominating format.

    TTFN

    1. Re:Yea well... by ultramk · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...even better, these new discs will be a critical tool in the War on Terra.

      Or something.

      m-

      --
      You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
  11. Scratched discs? by adisakp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course, with 850GB per disc, a single scratch will wipe out a couple gigs of data.

    1. Re:Scratched discs? by peragrin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      with that much storage redundancy is ideal.

      heck i would even go so far as make the drives have 3 partitions of identical storage.

      What is needed is a durable shell. modern storage works on the surface of the medium. Why can't we manpulate an inner layer? Even if the two layers are seperated by the few nanometers. Think Bablyon 5 data crystals, or Star Trek isolinear optical chips. Data is stored in a matrix surrounded by a more durable structure.

      What is needed is a semi-hard material that is always transparent to the laser reader/writers. That way the outside milimeter would need to be scratched off before damage could be done.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Scratched discs? by Axiom_1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, these things are nanotech, and operate at the quantum level. If the disk is scratched, your data will quantum probability cloud. Solving Schrodinger's equation for the disc will reveal a 50% probability that your data is still there, and a 50% probability that your data is now a dead cat.

  12. finally... clone your entire drive by johnpaul191 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    maybe with media this large people will be more likely to back up (clone?) their entire hd? maybe not.... but it would make it a lot easier than picking the important files.

    even of the slightly more responsible people i know... a few lost their entire mp3 collection when the drive died. i guess they did not have a 200 gig backup drive.

  13. Damn only 850 by Admiral+Trigger+Happ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That wont even fit a quater of the data we deal with, Uncomressed video takes a LOT of space. We need 10 Terabyte discs

    --
    Admiral Trigger Happy
  14. Not news by SkinnyPapa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Every few months, some new technology pops-up with promises of greater storage capacity (all simpsons episodes on 1 disc!!1!1one) on today's or future optical/magnetic media.
    Be it some variation of Holographic storage, which has been promised over 10 years ago or something different.
    This is this generation's Cold Fusion.
    Besides, seeing how much trouble there is with the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD war, I doubt we'll see any other format come up in the next 7-8 years.

  15. I'll wait 5 years.. by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    850 gigs ? Wow.. nice but how about reliability and longevity? (I'm sure the press release will promise the heaven and sky.) I'm reminded of this by people setting themselves up as guniea pig experiments for laser eye surgery. I'll wait another 10 years before diving into that one too. A lot of theory suggests everything will be okay but I'll let father time be the judge of that.

  16. As cool as this is... by Gardenhead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's a step in the wrong direction. The great minds behind all this new technology need to meet up AGAIN so these things can make it into the consumer's hands. I don't want 3 different optical drives in my tower. This could either start DVD doomsday or this technology could take the path of everthing else that Iomega has made; they tend to overcharge for media, which is ultimately their downfall.

  17. Space abundance by Council · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
    1. Re:Space abundance by diggem · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One of the uses for all that storage is for memory enhancing systems. See wearable computing.

      Basically, the computer records and stores your daily activities. Say earlier you met some nice young chica, or a friend with a great business oportunity. Whatever, it's been recorded for you and is indexed and searchable.

      "What was her number?" Play it back later on, you have it. Etc..

      At least, that's one use for mega-storage. You need speedy processing to go along with it to enable face and voice recognition. I always forget names, it'd be nice to have a cue when I see somebody the next time.

    2. Re:Space abundance by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 3, Funny
      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?

      850gb is more than anyone will ever need...

      --
      "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    3. Re:Space abundance by Monoman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Unlimited space might take a while. The more abundant space becomes the more we can turn up the quality of digitizing audio, video, etc.

      * Regarding search-based system *

      I was first exposed to a search/tag-based filing system by Opera's M2 mail client. It wasn't until Gmail and del.icio.us that I realized the advantages of search/tag-based filing systems. It finally hit me like a brick and I felt I had to tell all of my friends and get them on board.

      Now however, the more I think about it the more I start to think this won't be the panacea it looks like at first. Think about having ALL of your files in ONE folder in a few years. When I say ALL, I mean emails, documents, music, video, data files, etc. What happens when you need to manually find something because for whatever reason searching won't do the job?

      Imagine looking through tens of thousands of files with counter-intuitive names (file001.jpg, readme-542.txt, etc). Imagine how slow the "old" tools (dir, explorer, ls, etc) will work with those tens of thousands of files in one folder. Frustration will set in very very quickly.

      I am still a proponent of the search/tag-based approach but I think it will need to be incorporated into the hierarchical system currently in use.

      and what do I really know.

      --
      Keep the Classic Slashdot.
    4. Re:Space abundance by evillorddan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      640K is more than anyone will ever need... Hmm.

  18. Imagine a DVD... by voss · · Score: 2, Funny

    That could hold 280,000 MP3s or
    150 full length movies at 480 progressive.

    I could store my entire media collection on
    one disc and still not be able to find anything ;-)

    Thats pretty cool.

  19. Re:Cool idea....but by Soybean47 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Man, I remember when my 40 Mb hard drive was sufficient for my needs, including an office suite and several of the latest games at the time. CDs seemed ridiculously huge as a storage medium. Who would possibly need 650Mb on a single disk? That's crazy!

    Anyway, my point is, even if we accept your wacky hypothesis that nobody legitimately fills their 120Gb drives these days, it seems obvious that our storage needs will increase in the future. If there isn't any imaginable way to use a disk like this now, there will be soon.

  20. Re:Click of death ... on remote control? by Humorously_Inept · · Score: 2, Insightful

    True enough, but they were very good about replacing the affected drives regardless of whether they were still under warranty or not. I think the quality of a company's warranty says a lot about the people running it and their intentions. Commitment to customer satisfaction is quite rare and I can only hope that Iomega still maintains that same commitment.

    --

    ~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
  21. DVD's as backup by phorm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (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 :-)

  22. Dumb Questions by cagle_.25 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    FTA: Iomega is working to investigate the commercial feasibility of this format and other nano-structural data encoding formats. One possibility being investigated, termed NG-DVD (Nano-Grating - DVD), uses nano-gratings to encode multi-level information via reflectivity, polarization, phase, and reflective orientation multiplexing.

    1) What is the difference between polarization and reflective orientation?

    2) How are they measuring reflectivity? From the amplitude of a reflected beam?

    This is some impressive technology.

    --
    Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
  23. Smaller discs! by ardor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The 6,5" CDs are annoying. I like the smaller ones, but with only ~250 MB capacity the usefulness of these is limited. However, a small version of these DVDs would be fine. Easier transporation, less danger of being broken...

    Besides, it just looks cooler. Would remind me of the Johny Mnemonic 320GB discs (the movie was crap, but the disc and the drive were cool).

    --
    This sig does not contain any SCO code.
  24. Inevitable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The inevitable thing is that whenever we have more data storage, we'll fill it with more data.

  25. Since it's Iomega.... by Slashcrap · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...allow me to translate the press release into reality :

    New technology, called Articulated Optical - DVD will allow 40-100 times more data (upto 850 Gb) to be lost from a DVD at a speed 5-30 times faster than today's DVDs, and at a truly ridiculous cost. AO - DVD is a novel technique of destroying data on the surface of a DVD by using reflective nano-structures to completely fuck up your data beyond any means of recovery in a highly multi-level format.

    Click, click, click, grrinnd, crrruunnncchh. FUCK!

  26. Buffing compound by ka9dgx · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A good friend of mine does service for Auto Dealers. They had a similar situation with critical data on a CD. He took the CD, went out to the body shop, put some buffing compound on it, buffed it up, rinsed, and it was as good as new.

    Letting a company go out of business because they don't understand the basics of the technology speaks volumes about the loss of American Inginuity.

    --Mike--

    1. Re:Buffing compound by nozzo · · Score: 2, Informative

      A typical CD-R has a recordable layer sandwiched between a polycarbonate disk and an acrylic disk on which is the label. If you take an old CD-R and scrape the label off you will see that what you are left with is the poly disk which in context is quite thick. I use buffing compound to restore disks for clients with amazing success although I would recommend scratching and repairing an old CD first. The same method for regular music CDs which is great if you have piles of them our of their cases (like me)

  27. I call bullshit by autopr0n · · Score: 4, Informative

    I once sold a backup solution to a company who decided to go with DVD's rather than tape for the cost of the media alone. Three months later someone moving the dvd platter dropped it on the way to the vault...a Company that had been in business 20 years was out of business because of one mistake and cheap media.

    If it was on the way to the vault, why didn't they just do anther backup? Why didn't they just restore from an older backup?

    Also, DVD's do have protection against scratches, the layer of accrylic covering the data layer. If that part gets scratched, it dosn't really matter, because the laser dosn't focus on that part. Scraches and imperfections 'dissapear' from the POV of the DVD player.

    They also put a lot of redundant data on the disk, so that if some of the bits are lost, the disk is still readable.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:I call bullshit by Kent+Recal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Whether the story is bullshit or not. IF it happened like that then the company deserved what they got and it had nothing to do with what media they used (be it dvd, tape or papyrus scrolls) but rather their backup strategy was faulty.

      A single media can fail at any time so if you don't have multiple full backups available at any given time then either your data is not worth backing up or your IT team has no clue.

  28. ...similarly low price by 4/3PI*R^3 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    LOL, we're talking about IOMEGA here. The company that still thinks it can charge $10-$15 dollars for a 100MB magnetic disk that only works with their proprietary drive.


    I quit using my zip drive years ago. Everybody has a CD-ROM drive any more; almost nobody has a Zip drive. CD-R media costs a whopping $0.10 for 650MB of data. I can burn 100 CD-R's before I incur the same cost as one Zip disk.


    IOMEGA's biggest problem is that once they set a price for their products the rest of the market be damned they will not lower their price to compete. All this patent is going to do is ensure that IOMEGA will be able to charge 50 quakazillion dollars for their DVD media when you can do the exact same thing for under $100 using current DVD technology.

  29. Will it include their patented "Click of Death" t? by melted · · Score: 2, Funny

    Will it include their patented "Click of Death" technology?

  30. Charge for Blank Media by Punko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hmmm with 850 GB if data per disc, at 4 mb per song, I guesstimate that the music & video boys are gonna want some serious cash. If approximately 212,500 songs fit on a single disc, and they want a blank disc tax of $0.01 per song, or $2,125 per disc.

    Kinda silly when the media will worth only pennies per disc.

    --
    If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
  31. Write twice, read once - can you say "redundancy" by JCOTTON · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The cure for the "scratch syndrome" would be simple reduncancy. Write all data twice, in different sections of the disk. Yeah, so a 800GB disk now becomes a 400 GB disk. So what? Now you really have to scratch it up to make it unreadable. You still have 400 good gigabytes of space, which is a lot more than today's 4 to 8 GBs per disk. Or, all you Computer Science types can work up a good bit check algorythm that can put those scrached out bits back.

    To confirm you're not a script, please type the text shown in this image: MICroSOFt SUCks.

  32. Re:Integrity by Rei · · Score: 2, Funny

    Cue the server room fire in three... two... one...

    --
    All we want to do is eat your brains.
  33. Simply NOT true... by korbin_dallas · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "and at similarly low costs."

    Iomega NEVER sold any media at anything near similar low cost. In fact their media was always a premium cost. I think they were just mad they never got in the champagne, er ink business. :^)

    --
    They Live, We Sleep
  34. So Much For Obviousness by John+Hasler · · Score: 2, Funny

    Ok. All you guys downloading MP3's to your Ipods have to stop. You're infringing Iomega's patents:

    "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed that Iomega invented the broad concept of exchanging data between a computer and another digital device using removable data storage."

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  35. Forget compression! by LesPaul75 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, I know, this is probably just another article about vaporware. But, if it were true, imagine what you could do with an 850GB DVD:

    - A single frame of 1080p HD video is 1920 x 1080 pixels, or 2073600 pixels.
    - Each pixel is 24 bits of RGB, so 2073600 x 3 bytes = 6220800 bytes for each frame of video.
    - at 30 frames per second, one second of video would take 186624000 bytes.

    So with 850GB of space, you could store about 80 hours of completely uncompressed, high-definition, true-color video. Wow... Is my math right there? I didn't expect it to be that much. Anyway, that would look pretty spiffy on your fancy 60" HDTV. Plenty of room left over for a few dozen tracks of completely uncompressed digital audio, too. :)

  36. you confused CD-R with DVD-R by alizard · · Score: 3, Informative
    The NIST publication "Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs - A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" says CD-R has the soft acrylic layer under the label, data layer, and polycarbonate layer and DVDs have a polycarbonate layer on both sides with the data layer sandwiched inbetween.

    This is why CD-Rs are much more fragile than DVD-Rs.