New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray • Hacker News Board

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#41

Post by wazoox » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

mattowen_uk wrote: post #2

This 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…

Some guys I know propose a storage on 35mm-film solution that looks pretty foolproof for a couple of centuries at least.

https://digifilm-corp.com/preserve-your-works-for-eternity

To read back the data, you need something to digitize the film (a flatbed scanner would work, I've tried, or probably even a smartphone with a a DIY magnifier), then something to decode the data (the necessary source code is provided in clear on the first images of each roll).

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#42

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

zitterbewegung wrote: post #9

MisterTea wrote: post #3

The 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 ?

Optical discs aren't torn apart when the reader malfunctions?

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#43

Post by clairity » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #13

gjm11 wrote: post #10

In 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…

A better definition then would be: Assuming each dimension is infinite, how many dimensions do you need to uniquely address a bit. The infinite requirement is there so the answer can't be reduced to "1 dimension" every time (if you had a 10x10 matrix you could just turn it into an array of 100 elements).

what you're dancing around is linear independence, which is the idea that two functions can't be described as a function of each other, which also means they can be used to specify every other function in the intervening function space. the least number of linearly independent coordinate functions (usually transformed down to unit vectors) is the dimensionality of the system. note that you can have linearly dependent functions/coordinate systems, which this '5d' moniker is akin to.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#44

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #3

The 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…

I burn 100GB backups via blu-ray. One or two is enough for my non-movie files. They started stagnating a few years ago when streaming ascended however. Shame as I'd like higher capacity as well.

Cheap USB flash drives are already moving into this space. I just got a compact 256GB one for $35 or so, just a matter of time. SD cards would probably be more convenient, but they aren't sadly aren't read in devices like stereos any longer.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#45

Post by Hamuko » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

GhettoComputers wrote: post #31

tomc1985 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nooooooooooo, you're supposed to back it up to the cloud and pay some startup jerk $XX/mo for the privilege! [/s]

Says whom? Most cloud storage have huge free tiers. I have unlimited storage on telegram.

I bet you actually have "unlimited" storage.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#46

Post by Hamuko » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #40

rdevsrex wrote: post #21

Yeah, my first thought even before reading the article, was "What about seek times?". Maybe it can be improved, but thinking of web apps specifically, I'm not sure what kind of use case you would have for something that is this slow to access.

This is for archival purposes. Seek times don’t matter for that use case.

Seek times always matter even if they're not the top priority. And especially if we're talking about a storage medium that takes in a whopping 500 TB.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#47

Post by IndexCardBox » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #38

Off topic: if I wanted to digital store files to pass down to my children that might not be access for decades , what's the best medium to store such data? Floppy/ZipDrive/CD-ROM/Blueray/USB-A are either obsolete or are on their way out. What's a future proof storage option? (and if you said Cloud Storage {X} - just look at how many services have folded in just the last few years alone). Secondly, what's the best fil…

I'd hedge my bets and store it multiple ways in multiple formats. Including physical (print off pictures, diaries, etc. on acid free paper with acid free inks)

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#48

Post by jbarrs » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

I remember when I first heard about 5D storage back in 2013 [1][2]. The concept isn't at all new; in fact, there's a 5D storage device floating around in a Tesla in space, and Musk has another in his personal library. Nonetheless, it's great to see that it hasn't just dropped off the radar and that developments are still being made. I hope that this technology can one day be as widely available as CDs are; its potential usefulness to archivers/data hoarders really excites me, and (so long as the price is right) who can really sniff at extremely high-capacity, long-lasting storage?

[1] https://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/news/4282

[2] https://doi.org/10.1364%2FCLEO_SI.2013.CTh5D.9

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#49

Post by mixmastamyk » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

TacticalCoder wrote: post #30

MivLives wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a well known problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Yup it's a well-known problem, but several of us still have CDs decades old that still do read totally fine. That doesn't mean we rely on them as backups: mine have long since been copied to DVDs, then more recent DVDs but also backup'ed on harddrive / servers etc.

I still have music CDs from 1985 and CD-R from 1995 in perfect condition. None of them have gone bad.

Re: New 5D Storage to Offer 10,000x the Density of Blu-ray

#50

Post by GhettoComputers » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #45

GhettoComputers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says whom? Most cloud storage have huge free tiers. I have unlimited storage on telegram.

I bet you actually have "unlimited" storage.

Can you name something that is not "unlimited"?

I don't have a limit, I never hit the cap. By that logic nothing is unlimited (texts, calls, data, etc), but realistically it doesn't matter because I don't use it much. I don't care to test it, I use it sparingly and never had a issue with limits.