Titanium Oxide For High-Density Optical Storage 172
Posted
by
kdawson
from the fast-cheap-and-in-control dept.
from the fast-cheap-and-in-control dept.
Stoobalou and other readers sent along word of research out of Japan, using a new crystal form of titanium oxide for high-density data storage — promising discs that store 1,000 times more data than Blu-ray does today, up to 25 TB. The material transforms from a black-colored metal state that conducts electricity into a brown semiconductor when hit by light, at room temperature. Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth that of the rare element that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs. The material is cheap and safe, and is already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint. The researchers successfully created the material in particles measuring as small as 5 nanometers in diameter.
Re:Conductive properties (Score:3, Interesting)
Won't see 1000x for a few years. (Score:4, Interesting)
Interestingly in CD-ROM's heyday it wasn't uncommon for a PC to have a smaller hard drive than the amount of data that would fit on a CD-ROM. About the time DVD-ROMs were out I suppose hard drives were only a little larger. Blue-rays were fraction the size of a hard drive when the format spec was finalized (2005). Now hard drives are 20-40x larger than a blu-ray disc.
Carelessly extrapolating from the trend I predict we might not see this technology in widespread use until a common consumer hard drive is past the 25TB mark.
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:5, Interesting)
I admit having no idea about the answer to that very interesting question but the fact that the surface changes "when hit by light, at room temperature" makes me suspect it doesn't have much chance on that front.
We need a disk that can only be writen by divine intervention at Hell's main furnace, temperature.
Re:Good for archival purposes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Light? Daylight will ruin your data? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Won't see 1000x for a few years. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a 286 @ 20MHz with 1 MB of RAM, a 40 MB hard drive, SB 16, EGA, both 3.5" HD (1.44 MB) and 5.25" HD (1.2 MB) and a 2x CDROM. The whole system still works. Ken's Labyrinth rocks!
Re:So when can I watch OFHD movies? (Score:1, Interesting)
Good news: The analog masters don't contain much more information than the 2 megapixels per frame that you get with 1080p. Typical digital cinema projectors are 2K, which means they project a 2048 pixels wide picture (1080p is 1920 pixels wide). 4K projectors are still rare and only digitally produced movies currently provide the level of detail required to make a difference when compared to 2K projectors.