this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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Note: Unfortunately the research paper linked in the article is a dead/broken/wrong link. Perhaps the author will update it later.

From the limited coverage, it doesn't sound like there's an actual optical drive that utilizes this yet and that it's just theoretical based on the properties of the material the researchers developed.

I'm not holding my breath, but I would absolutely love to be able to back up my storage system to a single optical disc (even if tens of TBs go unused).

If they could make a R/W version of that, holy crap.

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[–] [email protected] 156 points 8 months ago (33 children)

It's "only" 125 TB. Still a lot, and impressive. But I just hate the stupid click baity 'petabit' term. We use bytes GB and TB as a standard, just use the standard term it's impressive enough.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But then the headline would have to say "Scientists Develop Optical Disc with measly 125TB's of Storage"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Exclamation marks usually help .... and comic sans

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I like to express my storage sizes in nibs. I think that makes this a 250 teranib disk.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

IMO the whole byte stuff is pretty confusing, people should have just sticked with bits, because that avoids implementation details.

One bit is the smallest amount of information. Bytes historically had different amounts of bits, depending on the architecture. With ASCII and the success of the 8 bit processor word of the Intel 8080/8085 processor, it is now defacto 8 Bit long.

But personally, byte seems a bit (no pun intended) like the imperial measurement system.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Agreed. Bits are used more commonly when talking about transfer speeds, and bytes regarding storage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I feel like I’ve seen bits used for storage on the scientific level since stuff like the pits and lands on a disc are expressed that way. To anyone in CS, you’d regard storage as a discrete whole part in some way. So bytes are fine. But when you’re developing storage, I believe you’d be concerned about bit density. Would need to read the paper though.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I just want this disc in a DVD-RAM format.. It doesn't have to be extremely fast just readable and writable.. I used to love DVD-RAM until 4.25gb became nothing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (7 children)

8 bits in a byte, networks are measured in bits.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Data is stored in bytes (as the minimum size), it's moved as a bitstream (continuous flow, without regard to individual byte boarders).

Hence storage is measured in bytes, network connections are measured in bits/second.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Are disks though?

I think the last time I saw storage measured in bits was a SNES cartridge.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I’m already ready to buy the 32K ultra extended directors cut of the LOTR with this news.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Lol, I feel like it'd still be a multi-disc set.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

It had better be.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

It's traditional to split Fellowship at Rivendell.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Let me guess, you'll watch it on your 720p TV? /s

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Give him credit, it's 900p

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Lets meet halfway and say 900i

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago

We're almost there...

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago

The wet dream of all the people who pirate. This and crystal storage.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I so wish we had some affordable, high-density storage technology that we could record and then forget it in the attic for 20 years.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I mean there's magnetic tape. It's not, like, usable. But it's also none too volatile if stored properly.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Research is one thing, getting from concept to production is another. There was a lot of hype about holographic disc formats years ago that was promising capacities from 100 GB to several TBs but they never actually made it to the market.

With the ongoing "death" of physical media playing out in the consumer space, it will also probably be hard for these esoteric disc formats to attract the investment needed to develop them. There might be some enterprise interest if the tech is stable enough for archival use I suppose.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I could see it easily replacing tape libraries as backup devices in data centers. Without the economies of scale like we saw with DVD-RW, I doubt I'd be able to afford one until they hit the secondhand market. It would also be interesting to see something like that integrated into storage appliances which would let you have something approaching an on-prem version of Amazon's Glacier tier.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (6 children)

If they could make a R/W version of that, holy crap.

If those turn up at any sort of reasonable cost, it would simplify my home backups so much. I only have about 14TB currently on my NAS (including workstation backups) but even at that size backups are a problem. The irreplaceable stuff (about 3TB worth) is backed up in the cloud. My ripped DVDs/BRDs would all have to be reripped, other stuff I'd just have to find again or live without. I've been looking at the advancements being made in tape drives, but those are all priced for business.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Tell me you are American, with out telling me you are American....

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Whats the read write speed?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

They don't want us (consumers) to own anything. The world will turn up and down before this gets released to consumers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A big part of the problem is that most consumers don't want to own things either. Subscriptions are exactly what too many people want.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I think even that goes back around to business interests. We can't store that many physical copies in shrinking, expensive housing. Digital purchasable media is somehow just as expensive despite having tiny manufacturing and logistical costs, on top of being unreliable due to DRM.

Subscriptions so far seemed like a better value proposition but between splitting and vanishing libraries, increasing prices and the addition of ads, that's becoming more questionable. Even average people aren't so thrilled of having to subscribe to a dozen different services to watch, listen and play what they want.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Does it even matter when companies have dumped physical copies for streaming?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

It would make physical sharing of data a lot more efficient instead of the old stack of floppy disks we carried around in the old days.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This is more for bulk data storage than home media.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

That would be amazing! You could store the entire 450TB of ebooks in annas-archive on 4 of those disks!!!

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