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An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

sciencealert.com.au

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Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#121

Post by hnha »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #102
waqf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books are small enough that this has pretty much already happened (search for "library genesis").

Could you explain more exactly what "library genesis" is? Is it a collection of basically every book ever published or only modern things? Did someone scan everything, like Google books?

It's basically a huge collection of documents, mostly scientific with a FOSS codebase for serving. It comes with metadata. It is mirrored a lot thanks to bring completely open. It originated in Russia and has had quite the history. It is a great step into the direction how documents (especially scientific) should be available to anyone in bulk without restrictions.

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#122

Post by vinkelhake »

throwawayaway wrote: post #112
NKCSS wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting that the speed at which optical drives can be written is bound by the rotation speed. If you have a single laser of this type and mount it in a traditional drive as we know, it would take over a year to write a single disk :) Still lots to do :)

is anyone else really bothered that the article says CD but it's actually about DVD?

That seems overly nitpicky. It's about a new technique for beam lithography and achieving a smaller feature size than previously possible.

The "1000 TB" is just PopSci extrapolation at this point. If it does happen, it'll be neither a CD nor DVD.

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#124

Post by tgb »

delecti wrote: post #71
Someone wrote: post #51

A big problem with spinning disks is that storage grows inversely with the area of the dots, while reading and writing speed grow inversely with the diameter of the dots. If you store 100 times as much data, all else being equal, time to write a full disk will be ten times as large. Ways around that are increasing rotation speed (been there, done that. There is little to gain here without making the disk a lot strong…

Bandwidth increasing proportional with the square root of the storage growth is a pretty great trend. If anything that sounds like a plus.

Looks like it gives 2.9 gigabits per second for a 5cm disk radius at 5000 rpm.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5000rpm+*+(2*pi*5cm)%2F...

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#125

Post by harwoodr »

NKCSS wrote: post #99
krrrh wrote: post #18

If this is real and can be commercialized it could lead to some pretty devastating fallout for the entertainment industry. You've got to know that there are a few obsessive archivists out there with pretty comprehensive collections of films spread across rooms of RAID arrays. When they can start backing those collections up for friends onto a single disc, ie a single disc that has more films than you could possibly w…

You are forgetting that the speed at which optical drives can be written is bound by the rotation speed. If you have a single laser of this type and mount it in a traditional drive as we know, it would take over a year to write a single disk :) Still lots to do :)

Really? Assuming that the rotation speed is the same for a normal disk and this denser format, wouldn't said laser be moving over 250,000 times as much data in the same time period?

At 1X speed, a DVD's data rate is about 11Mbit/s - so at 250,000 times the density, isn't it safe to assume a theoretical data rate of 2.75Tbit/s? Of course, pushing that much data at that rate is another problem...

If my assumptions are incorrect, please let me know - I'm just trying to understand.

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#126

Post by hashberry »

throwawayaway wrote: post #112
NKCSS wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting that the speed at which optical drives can be written is bound by the rotation speed. If you have a single laser of this type and mount it in a traditional drive as we know, it would take over a year to write a single disk :) Still lots to do :)

is anyone else really bothered that the article says CD but it's actually about DVD?

It's actually about optical discs. But "CD" is the vernacular for optical discs. Kind of like "hard drive." Modern laptops don't have hard drives--they have solid-state drives, but people still refer to their storage as a "hard drive."

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#127

Post by tobylane »

harwoodr wrote: post #125
NKCSS wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting that the speed at which optical drives can be written is bound by the rotation speed. If you have a single laser of this type and mount it in a traditional drive as we know, it would take over a year to write a single disk :) Still lots to do :)

Really? Assuming that the rotation speed is the same for a normal disk and this denser format, wouldn't said laser be moving over 250,000 times as much data in the same time period? At 1X speed, a DVD's data rate is about 11Mbit/s - so at 250,000 times the density, isn't it safe to assume a theoretical data rate of 2.75Tbit/s? Of course, pushing that much data at that rate is another problem... If my assumptions are…

52x speed has been the limit for a long time because the outside edge of the CD gets to speeds where it could damage itself. I guess it would need a cushion, like a nearly applied (car/bike) disc brake.

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#128

Post by thinkling »

NKCSS wrote: post #99
krrrh wrote: post #18

If this is real and can be commercialized it could lead to some pretty devastating fallout for the entertainment industry. You've got to know that there are a few obsessive archivists out there with pretty comprehensive collections of films spread across rooms of RAID arrays. When they can start backing those collections up for friends onto a single disc, ie a single disc that has more films than you could possibly w…

You are forgetting that the speed at which optical drives can be written is bound by the rotation speed. If you have a single laser of this type and mount it in a traditional drive as we know, it would take over a year to write a single disk :) Still lots to do :)

Hmmm. Maybe you could use a prism/mirror array (like in digital projectors) to use a single laser to write in multiple places at once? (Or rather, in sequence but moving faster than the disc rotates?)

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#129

Post by uncoder0 »

kedean wrote: post #55
krapp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the internet" is a more fragile medium than a disk, that's why. High-density, cheap, persistent data storage is critical to make sure that most of the cultural expressions of the last few generations don't vanish into a black hole sooner than later. It's our version of ancient Babylon's cuneiforms etched in wet clay. Just imagine how much crap Jason Scott could fit into a storage container with these. A lot of crap.…

I'm skeptical that this won't be extremely fragile, physically. With details that small, the slightest scratch could erase large swaths of data.

http://www.mdisc.com/ or similar. There are tons of options for archival quality backup media. If the data is very important make a few copies and leave them in airtight cases if you'd like in different geographical locations.

Re: An Australian researcher has worked out how to store 1000TB on a CD

#130

Post by uncoder0 »

eru wrote: post #96
nnnnni wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's often really "startup news" =-(

It used to be Startup News.

Huh, didn't know that was the original name. I personally prefer the Hacker New moniker. I imagine 'Startup News' was just a working title for the project as it was only kept for ~7 months.
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