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GE To Sample 500GB DVD-Size Discs Soon
siliconbits writes "GE Global Research announced earlier today that it has managed to cram up to 500GB worth of data on a standard DVD-size disc, an increase in storage density of roughly 100x. What's more, the tech arm of conglomerate General Electric Company says that the storage solution will record data at the same speed as Blu-ray discs while increasing storage capacity by 25 times. The Blu-ray Disk Association says that the commonly available 12x speed Blu-ray writers have a maximum writing speed of up to 400Mbps (or 50MBps) which means that in theory, it would take just over three hours to fill that new holographic hard disk. GE has confirmed that its R&D and licensing team will be sampling the media to qualified partners that may be interested in licensing the technology."
...that optical media was dead.
If it costs more per gigabyte than pocket sized hard drives, it's dead to me.
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it does.
Since the reference is to standard DVD-sized discs, it's reasonable that the 100x is to standard DVD capacity, which is right around 5GB.
I would like to see how much they could cram into a disc with a 1" radius. The way I see it, the only way this technology will really take off is if they make it cheap and convenient. There is little need for 500GB of portable general purpose optical storage - portable HDs work fine. But I could see a use for ~20GB of cheap, portable, and disposable storage; the sort of thing you hand off to someone knowing full well you will never get it back. Around 20GB would be enough for HD video content, anything more would be wasted - better to reduce the physical size.