GE Shows Off 1TB DVD-Sized Disks at the Emerging Tech Conference
September 30, 2009 by John Messina
(PhysOrg.com) -- At the September '09 Emerging Tech Conference in Boston, GE announced it has been developing a 1TB DVD size disk that can be read by a modified Blu-ray player.
The first products using this technology will be 1TB drives used for archival storage. GE expects this to reach the market in two to three years with another two or more year before it's available to consumers.
GE is anticipating that this technology can store an entire 3D move that would be impossible to store on current blu-ray disk. The holographic drives will have a 3ms access time and data transfer rates up to five times faster than a DVD.
Holographic storage involves holograms, images of data being stored in layers on a DVD size disk. The drives work by splitting a laser beam into a reference beam and a signal beam, which is encoded with data. By crossing the two beams an interference pattern is created which is then stored on the disk.
Older versions of holographic drives store pages of a million bits stacked ten thousand deep at hundreds of locations on a disk. GE researchers discovered by reducing the page size to a single bit, called micro holograms, they could store as much data per unit area but was much easier to read. It turns out that the upper data layers can be read by a standard Blu-ray player and by slightly increasing the tracking range of the Blu-ray read head all layers can be accessed.
GE is planning to license the technology to manufactures for construction of the drives and disk. Peter Lorraine, GE lab manager stated at the Emerging Tech Conference, that license announcements could be expected soon.
Via: The Inquirer and The Register
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Feb 08, 2010
If so, sign me UP!
This technology will be well used, I for one have several TB, try backing that up on standard DVDs or Blu-ray discs, it would take several weeks and you would have to compress a lot of it.
This isn't for home use yet. This is enterprise storage media, replacing old unreliable DAT.
Our memories will become links to records we can totally rely on forever- sights, sounds, biometry, thoughts, feelings, etc.
These disks are a step to caching your lives for selective, high fidelity replay.
Stretch your brain like Mr. Fantastic. 'Yet' is tomorrow. I remember discussing a 5 dimensional disk storage tech story (here?) in the spring and someone said 'soon meant 10 years.' And now we are shown this. Progress is now a parabola, feeding on itself.
It always has been.
So how much is a blank DVD in Canada? You could probably calculate the upcoming price of these super DVD's then. I wonder if they are DVD ROM or DVD RAM, can you erase and re-record? The price should come down in any event, the price of Bluray is already following the same path as the rest of the digital recording market. It would seem this product would be only for industrial use but memory products have a habit of finding its way into the commercial market as well when new aps are invented that takes more and more memory. These DVD's will be in everyone's lives soon.
Granted the storage is awesome but seriously they created TB optical disks a long time ago. wiki HD DVD its pretty impressive.