The competition between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD seems to be ridiculous and pointless when you compare it with the plans of Mempile company. After achieving the maximum of 2 or 4 layers on present-day discs, they’re coming with a 200-layer medium called TeraDisc™. It’s those 200 virtual layers in a DVD-size medium (1,2 mm thick) that allow such a huge amount of data to be stored 3-dimensionally on a single disc. The medium contains light sensitive molecules (chromophores) capable of switching between two states thus saving digital data.
Although it might look like a universal solution to finding a better way to handle digital data, this technology is probably supposed to be only used for permanent archiving of data, not rewriting (I’ve never found a single mention of rewritable discs on Mempile’s homepage) which rather limits it’s practical use. Also, when storing such a vast amount of data on a single medium, you could soon regret it if the disc got scratched or damaged in some other way. However, it’s still a great deal to have a medium with 1 TB capacity, even if not rewritable. Besides, in the future, when the technology develops even more, the capacity of TeraDiscs should eventually reach up to 5 TB.
This invention appears to be a nice breakthrough in 3D data storage technology but I’m still convinced that it’s only a necessary part of transition which I’m waiting for. I mean who wants to use discs that get easily damaged when not handled properly…
In my opinion, datacubes are to replace discs as we know them in the near future for the purpose of storing digital data 3-dimensionally. Does it sound too much like sci-fi ? Just like internet at the beginning of 19th century ?
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Actually, it only seems semi unpractical in transportation. Discs are thin, and can easily be stored in a catalog style. A cube, on the other hand, is harder to bring together because of that extra dimension. Though, I do like the idea of this disc. I’ve never used a rewritable disc myself, I stick to my flash drive if I need something constantly rewritten. If it needs to be protected, maybe they could put an additional, protective layer on it. Similar to those wraps you could put on the disc, that help ward of scratches.
I read such news every few months and the problem is, they need 5 years to introduce this technology to market, and in meantime there would be something else avabiale from other company :P