A couple of years from now, admittedly. I can wait.

How to fit 1TB of data on one CD-sized disc – News

Blu-ray and HD DVD have pushed the limits of optical storage further than anyone thought possible. But a new technology has emerged which makes Blu-ray’s 50GB capacity look tiny. Mempile in Israel says it’s able to fit an incredible 1TB of data onto one “TeraDisc” which is the same size as CDs and DVDs. That’s 20 times the capacity of a maxed-out dual-layer Blu-ray disc.

The incredible capacity achieved using this new technology is made possible by employing 200 5GB layers, each one only five microns apart. The discs are completely transparent to the red lasers which are used in the associated recorder.

Prototypes have already been made to store up to 800GB of data, and Mempile says it will crack the 1TB barrier before moving on to build 5TB blue laser disks.

Dr Beth Erez, Mempile’s Chief Marketing Officer says that the first 1TB disks have a lifespan of 50 years and could be on the shelves in two to three years.

On a 1TB disc, you could store:

* 212 DVD-quality movies
* 250,000 MP3 files
* 1,000,000 large Word documents



  1. Improbus says:

    This was announced years ago and I am still waiting … wake me up when it hits the shelves.

  2. Mister Mustard says:

    Now if they could just make 212 movies worth watching, this might be something to pay attention to. Some day. I’m with improbus though; wake me up when it hits the shelves.

    Of course, then they’ll be working on the 5Tb disc, and we’ll have to worry about finding ONE THOUSAND SIXTY movies worth watching…

  3. JPV says:

    Constellation 3D… anyone?

  4. BubbaRay says:

    I want it now — it takes two 400Gb external hard drives just to back up my observatory data. By 2008, a terabyte. Write it on plastic? I’m in!!

  5. Sinn Fein says:

    Cool!

    Did Al Gore invent this modern marvel as well?!

    I’m liking this Internet thing of his but, I’m afraid it may be contributing to Global Cooling. 🙂

  6. XPMaster says:

    TeraDisk… now you can waist even more space than ever before possible on one disk!

  7. James Hill says:

    Meanwhile, all of the major television service providers (cable and satellite) will have some form of VOD in place by the end of the year. I stand by my prediction that, in the time it will take for high definition movies to reach critical mass, the ability to torrent such movies in under 12 hours will be in place.

    Granted I was a kid at the time, but I remember when people said MIDI music downloads wouldn’t work on Q-Link (C64 era precursor to AOL) because of their size. Technology caught up to that idea, and it will catch up to this one.

  8. RBG says:

    “A computer disc about the size of a DVD that can hold 60 times more data is set to go on sale in 2006. The disc stores information through the interference of light – a technique known as holographic memory.

    The discs, developed by InPhase Technologies, based in Colorado, US, hold 300 gigabytes of data and can be used to read and write data 10 times faster than a normal DVD.”

    http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8370

  9. jlm says:

    damn, Michael Bay is going to really freak out now

  10. iGlobalWarmer (YOY) says:

    #2 – Waddya mean? Bare boobies and/or lots of explosions and you’ve got a good movie. 😉

  11. Interwebitubelink Surfer says:

    Yeah, but then what about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray? Are you saying early adopters are going to get screwed, again?!!?! No way, never happens…

    If they stream fast enough, the data could be either compressed, or entirely uncompressed (no artifacts!). The picture and sound would be as good as it was laid down by the video editors during post-production.

    Can you say, “Perfect Video and Sound” ??

  12. Lowfreq says:

    Yet more vaporware? Even if it does come out…so what? Solid state hard drives still offer better bang for the buck for mass data storage. Besides, just how pissed off will you be when your 3 year old scratches your 5TB disk of porn?

  13. Cinaedh says:

    #11 – iGlobalWarmer (YOY)

    “Waddya mean? Bare boobies and/or lots of explosions…”

    I think I’ve figured out the North American male’s obsession with large udders (apparently they were NOT breast fed as babies -> or were breast fed too long) but I still can’t figure out the obsession with blowing things up.

    Anyone care to help me out here?

  14. ECA says:

    DVD format has lasted HOW long?
    And remember it was out there BEFORE it was in the stores.
    I think they started about 93-95′

    So, 10 years later, we get HD/BR formats…

    I would think in about 5-10 years we MAY see this format…

  15. RSweeney says:

    Wow, over 200 movies on one disc.

    hmmm… at $10/movie, that’s over two grand for a single disc loaded with content.

    Somehow I don’t think this will be a distribution medium for movies. But maybe for TV series in HD.

  16. Angel H. Wong says:

    I wouldn’t be surprised at all that this good idea will die thanks to obscenely high royalty fees.

    Anyone else remember a 10mb floppy disc in the 80s?

  17. gquaglia says:

    How long before some other company creates a competing format. It will be blu ray/hd dvd all over again.

  18. Mister Mustard says:

    >>The picture and sound would be as good as it was laid down
    >>by the video editors during post-production.

    Yeah, and the content would be the same steaming pile of horse dung that it is on regular old DVD.

    If Hollywood could take its thumb out of its ass long enought to make a few more decent movies, they’d generate more interest in people being able to fit 1060 movies on a disk. Granted, people like Mr. Ray will be able to store their observatory data, but how many people need to do that?

  19. Nimby says:

    Fifty year lifespan?
    For a new technology that’s still in development?
    I remember when they told us CDs would last “forever”… Oooops! Data drops after only four or five years. We bad…

  20. Lauren the Ghoti says:

    Hahaha. Yang-keez. Suck-erz.

    By the time 1Tb optical is ready for the consumer market, spinning disks, optical or otherwise, will be legacy tech.

  21. KVolk says:

    #14

    Google Freud

  22. M. says:

    the next real big breakthrough will be the holographic write and read
    disc that will hold terabytes of data. no need to reduce any information.
    plus it will store 3 dimension info to be viewed without special glasses. glass cable will stream down HQ/HD on demand programs. maybe discs will not be needed at all!

  23. Lauren the Ghoti says:

    I predict! A many-layered card – holographic – read by a electonically-steered (i.e. nonmechanical) laser or laser array… No moving parts, total silence, ultimate reliability, scalability and compatibility with future improvements trivial…

    I’m thinking maybe 2 years before someone (IBM? Hitachi? TI?) pops out with something of the sort.

  24. Revenant says:

    #4 and #5 – Redundent backup of all that data to two disks and keep one as a local archive and one as off-site backup! Depending on the cost of the media there’s no reason why you couldn’t make 3, 4 or 5 copies and have cheap redunent redundent redundent redudundent redundent backup data.

    I’m just wondering why the push for “disk” type technology at all. Haven’t we gotten to the point where solid state should start making a comeback again? I’d rather have a 1 TB SNES cartridge that requires no moving parts to access the data than 1 TB *VD…


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