PCWorld reports that a “next new thing” optical disc outsizing even Blu-Ray is on its way:
TDK has developed a prototype optical disc that can hold up to 320GB of information — that’s more than six times the current highest-capacity media available. The 12-centimeter disc has 10 recording layers, each of which can store 32 Gigabytes. In comparison a Blu-ray Disc can hold 25GB on each layer, and a dual-layer disc is the highest capacity generally available at present.
The only problem is that we really don’t need this. I know, you’re thinking “640K ought to be enough for anybody,” but hear me out…
Our digital lives are getting more and more bandwidth- and storage-demanding. That’s just a fact. So it would seem that our optical media should also grow with us, as have our hard drives.
The problem with optical media is that it takes only one scratch to render the data irretrievable. Granted, hard drives have their limitations, too: Need a power source, have fine motorized parts (if HDD and not SSD), and are as fragile as any electronic equipment.
However, the “death scratch” on optical media could come from something as simple as putting it in a sleeve or case wrong. Additionally, some optical media players have been known to get out of balance and scratch the holy hell out of your discs whilst spinning them.
And 320GB is a SHIT TON of data to lose all at once from a single scratch. Perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue if the discs were as cheap to buy, and fast to write to as regular CD’s… but I assure you they aren’t, and won’t be for quite a long time.
So how about it? Can we move past optical media already?
link: TDK Develops 320GB Optical Disc – Business Center – PC World
Comments on this entry are closed.