Tera-Discs - shatters the capacity of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD
August 28, 2007
Tech UK is reporting a new disc storage technology that shatters the capacity of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray: the Tera-Disc.
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.
That basically means you on one disk you could fit:
- 212 DVD-quality movies
- 250,000 MP3 files
- 1,000,000 large Word documents
The practical purpose of this disk isn’t really known. I’m sure they would be expensive out of the gate, and until prices dropped so much that they would be competitive with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray then they won’t be showing up in BlockBuster any time soon. Still, 1TB is a LOT of data at this point.
