A Terabyte of Data on a Regular DVD?

Roland Piquepaille writes "This is the promise of the 3-D Optical Data Storage system developed at the University of Central Florida (UCF). This technology allows to record and store at least 1,000 GB of data on multiple layers of a single disc. The system uses lasers to compact large amounts of information onto a DVD and the process involves shooting two different wavelengths of light onto the recording surface. By using several layers, this technique will increase the storage capacity of a standard DVD to more than a terabyte. Read more for additional references and a diagram showing how this two-photon 3D optical system reads data."

Comments

Moo

[Chacham]

This technology allows to record and store at least 1,000 GB of data on multiple layers of a single disc...this technique will increase the storage capacity of a standard DVD to more than a terabyte.

1000GB != 1 Terabyte.
1024GB = 1 Terabyte

More specifically:

1 Terabyte = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes
1 Gigabyte = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Therefore

1000 Gigabyte = 1,073,741,824,000 bytes

1,099,511,627,776 - 1,073,741,824,000 = 25,769,803,776 or, well, 24G.

Now, this becomes especially noticeable if we take the "1000" thing all the way through:

1 Terabyte (according to this cockamamie 1000 scheme) = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes
1 Terabyte (in reality) = 1,099,511,627,776 bytes

The difference is 99,511,627,776 bytes or 92 (rounded down) Gigabytes. That's a loss of just under 10%. It used to be a stupid marketing trick, can please we be serious about it now?

Re:What's old is new again

[stile99]

I heard that's the media Duke Nukem Forever will be released on.