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

Cool

[jellomizer]

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

Re:Cool

[gunnk]

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.

Re:Cool

[/ASCII]

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.

Does a protoype exist?

[NightWulf]

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.

Yea well...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I'll wait 5 years..

[Adult film producer]

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.

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 :-)

Since it's Iomega....

[Slashcrap]

...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!

I call bullshit

[autopr0n]

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.