Have an opinion on this story? Share it with other News.com readers.Posted on 09/30/2004 1:50:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A new technology capable of storing the equivalent of 100 DVDs on a single DVD-size disc has been unveiled by researchers from London's Imperial College.
The storage medium, called Multiplexed Optical Data Storage or MODS, was revealed at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan on Monday by lecturer Peter Torok.
The development team said MODS can potentially store up to one terabyte (1,000 gigabytes) of data on one standard-size disc--enough for 472 hours of film, or every episode of the Simpsons. It would also have applications in enterprise data back-up and distribution.
MODS will be laser-based like DVDs, CDs and the new Blu-ray system but uses much more subtle variations in the way light reflects from the discs. Where existing schemes have patterns of pits that reflect the laser as a series of ones and zeros, MODS can encode and detect more than 300 variations per pit. After error correction and encoding, this leads to 10 times the data density of Blu-ray Disc, currently the record holder for consumer optical storage.
Blu-ray discs--currently available only in Japan, with European products expected in 2005--can store up to 25GB per layer and can have two layers. MODS will have 250GB in each of up to four layers.
"We came up with the idea for this disk some years ago," Torok, a reasearcher at Imperial College London, said in a statement, "but did not have the means to prove whether it worked."
Proving that required the development of a precise method for calculating the properties of reflected light, Torok said. "We are using a mixture of numerical and analytical techniques that allow us to treat the scattering of light from the disk surface rigorously rather than just having to approximate it."
Products are not expected for five to 10 years, depending on developmental funding, but the researchers are looking at using the technology in discs physically much smaller than current DVDs.
"Multiplexing and high density ODS comes in handy when manufacturers talk about miniaturisation of the disks," Torok said. "In 2002, Philips announced the development of a 3-centimeter diameter optical disk to store up to 1GB of data. The future for the mobile device market is likely to require small diameter disks storing much information. This is where a MODS disk could really fill a niche."
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But will it be big enough to hold a days worth of posts from FR :-{
Incredible storage.....aaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhh....
The surface of CDs and DVDs are made up of microscopic grooves filled with areas known as pits and land regions, which carry the information. Normal CDs and DVDs carry one bit for every pit. British researchers, however, have now come up with a way to store up to ten times the amount of information from each pit.
British physicists have developed a new optical disk with so much storage capacity that all the episodes of the "The Simpsons" would fit on one disk.
Peter Lorok of the Imperial College London, speaking at a conference in Taiwan Monday, described how he and his colleagues created a way potentially to encode and store as much as one terabyte, which is 1,000 gigabytes, of data. That's 472 hours of film, all on one CD.
That is more than all the extant episodes of "The Simpsons."
Known as Multiplexed Optical Data Storage, it works on a double-sided, dual-layer disk.
Under magnification the surface of CDs and DVDs appear as tiny grooves filled with pits and land regions. These pits and land regions represent information encoded into a digital format as a series of ones and zeros.
When read back, CDs and DVDs carry one bit per pit, but the Imperial researchers have come up with a way to encode and retrieve up to ten times the amount of information from one pit.
Unlike existing optical disks, MODS disks have asymmetric pits, each containing a "step" sunk at one of 332 different angles, which encode the information. The Imperial researchers developed a method that can be used to make a precise measurement of the pit orientation that reflects the light back. 
ROFL!
Vapor DVD stuff?:)
hah! I've already got two of these drives on my laptop. It's almost enough to back up my hard drives. :)
so which companies medium will winout and ruin it for the rest of us?
This is just the latest one, there is another technology that uses a large number of multiple layers in the disc but still recordes essentially the same way. It should be closer .
I just bought a DVD recorder that can record on a dual layer disc ( which is expensive right now ) for a capacity of 9 Gigabyte on a side I think,...
No idea, but it is wonderful!
"I just bought a DVD recorder that can record on a dual layer disc ( which is expensive right now ) for a capacity of 9 Gigabyte on a side I think,..."
The last part of that sentence sounds like a true tech weenie, "for a capacity of 9 Gigabyte on a side I think,..."
I need to dig out my instruction manual.
I wonder where I put it?
Real Freeper Men don't need no stinking instruction manual, maps or any kind of directions.
Responsiveness is near instaneous from 72 Gigabyte of Maxtor Atlas SCSI disks rotating at 10,000 rpms , 2 - 18 Gigs and a newly acquired 36 Gig disk,.
Now if I could get my printer and sound system working better I would really be set.
????
ROFL, I only look at manuals well after I should have.
I'm stuned by your tech winnieism!
Help me, we need some more tech weenies talking here.
Bookmark for the marvels of technology!
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