New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
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New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
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Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#2This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time?
People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifetime is. Compare this to books, which can still be read a millennium later.
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#3The other day I was talking with a friend about the high cost and perceived fragility of tape drives for long term personal archival while bemoaning the loss of higher density optical storage technology. It's not easy to backup or shuffle around terabytes of personal video, audio and pictures. Hard drives aren't exactly the right media for safe deposit boxes.
In the 90's I had an Iomega Ditto 250MB drive that held 120MB per tape for $15-20 per tape and my hard drive was 540MB. This was when hard disc storage cost $1000/GB. The tape drive had a quarter the capacity of the hard disc and was cheap by comparison. It was practical. Later when CD burners came out they offered 650 then 700MB when hard drives were less than 10GB. Then they became too small and DVD came out but shortly was also passed up as 4.7GB wasn't much storage. Bluray was DoA with too little storage to be of real interest with a paltry 25-50GB.
I'd love to see CHEAP >=1TB optical discs with a write speed of 100MB/s allowing us to burn a disc in ~10 minutes. I'd happily pay $1 a disc in bulk and upward of $1000 for a drive. I'd also happily pay $10+ for an archival disc that has a guaranteed shelf life of 50+ years. Bring back the 100 disc juke boxes while we're at it ;-) Cheap storage for everyone!
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#4This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…
Let's not forget actual rot too. I peered into a stack of CD's not long ago to find that a lot of them have quite literally rotted while sitting in a dark and dry closet. No dust, no humidity, no smoking, no abuse, just a spindle of CD's recognizable only by their sharpie'd identifiers covered in pits of rotted foil.
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#5This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…
> This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time?
If the data is important enough, we'll find a way. Perhaps by then camera phones will have sensors with quantum resolution that can capture the optical pits in one snap and use AI or whatever to reconstruct the bits from the image on whatever magical storage exists.
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#6This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…
There's no lack of DVD drives, they are widely available on Amazon, BestBuy, eBay.
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#7The other day I was talking with a friend about the high cost and perceived fragility of tape drives for long term personal archival while bemoaning the loss of higher density optical storage technology. It's not easy to backup or shuffle around terabytes of personal video, audio and pictures. Hard drives aren't exactly the right media for safe deposit boxes. In the 90's I had an Iomega Ditto 250MB drive that held 12…
Some have theorized that this is what's behind Amazon Glacier, and that they want to keep it to themselves: https://storagemojo.com/2014/04/25/amazons-glacier-secret-bd...
I also crave for such cheap storage, perfect for archival/backups, especially when combined with modern snapshotting.
HVDs never really materialized, despite being promising, and actually on the market at some point, IIRC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc
A lot of other medium were developped, never commercialized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_optical_data_storage
A new optical storage medium is long overdue. This time, it will probably be without support from the media industry.
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#8This is all well-and-good, but how do we read all that data in 500 years time, or even 20 years time? People were busily archiving data to CDs and DVDs two decades ago, thinking 'yeah this digital storage media will last for centuries!'... Loads of bit-rot combined with complete lack of DVD drives still in common [computer] usage, has totally shown that the more complex the storage media the shorter it's useful lifet…
Let's not forget actual rot too. I peered into a stack of CD's not long ago to find that a lot of them have quite literally rotted while sitting in a dark and dry closet. No dust, no humidity, no smoking, no abuse, just a spindle of CD's recognizable only by their sharpie'd identifiers covered in pits of rotted foil.
Temperature? I've yet to experience rot on decades old discs at home. Most sit in a basement that doesn't exceed 68*F
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#9The other day I was talking with a friend about the high cost and perceived fragility of tape drives for long term personal archival while bemoaning the loss of higher density optical storage technology. It's not easy to backup or shuffle around terabytes of personal video, audio and pictures. Hard drives aren't exactly the right media for safe deposit boxes. In the 90's I had an Iomega Ditto 250MB drive that held 12…
Why are tape drives fragile? I use them for my long term backups of personal files I thought they were robust ?
Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray
#10In case anyone is wondering what they mean by "5D": they mean it's a 3D array of marks, each of which has both size and orientation. The 3D array is three 2D layers.
According to this definition, a DVD or Blu-Ray disc is "4D" because it can have multiple layers each of which stores 1-dimensional data (pit versus no pit). And a book is at least "7D" because it contains a 3D arrangement of marks, and marks can vary in (at least) what letter they are, how large, how bold, and how slanted. (It would be easy to add to that list.)
I would describe this thing as 2.5D storage: it's basically 2-dimensional but with multiple layers.
If it's genuinely 10000x denser than Blu-ray, great! If it's likely to last longer, also great! But there's no need for this "five-dimensional" bullshit.
(It looks to me as if what they have at the moment is not anything like 10000x denser than Blu-ray. I'm not sure it's even 1x denser than Blu-ray at present.)