1 Terabyte Optical Disk Invented
Techtree News Staff Email Print
September 28, 2004
A new optical disk format has been invented by Scientists at the Imperial College, London, which enables 1,000 GB, a terabyte of data, to be stored on a disk the same size of a CD.
The disk, called MODS, for Multiplexed Optical Data Storage, works by varying the angle at which the disk reflects light from a drive's laser. This system can store 332 different data signals where a CD or DVD can only store two.
Imperial College's Peter Török said, that this would dwarf the capacity of DVDs, currently the most widely used video storage medium, but this technology is more likely to find a home in places that need to store vast amounts of data, such as libraries.
Although Török's team can get the data onto the disk, they do not have a drive that can read it back fast enough. Consequently they do not expect MODS to go into commercial production until 2010 or beyond.
A double-sided version of the disk could potentially contain 472 hours of video footage - equivalent to a terabyte. A double-sided, double-layered DVD holds less than 20 gigabytes of data.
BluRay disks, which are to be commercially released shortly, can hold a maximum of 100 gigabytes and MODS can store ten times as much.
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