New optical storage breakthrough could make CDs relevant again

[Those Who Squirm]

No comeback on the cards for most uses. The reason why discs died in the last decade for consumers wasn't just because they couldn't store enough data.

It was because:

1. Typical read/write speeds and particularly access speeds are not very fast.
2. The cost of NAND flash memory per gigabyte cratered. Implementations are usually faster, and easier to rewrite.
3. Not just NAND, high density hard drives cost per gigabyte fell considerably
4. The cost went down and availability of high speed internet went up. A lot. This also applies to cellular networks. 5GB of monthly 3G data fifteen years ago was not cheap. Unlimited 4/5G data today is relatively cheap, in many developed countries.

3 and 4 led to 5:

Cheap, widely available and mass acceptance of reliable cloud storage.

Most storage and distribution problems are solved better by one or a mixture of the above technologies for most people in their everyday lives.

As an afterthought you can also point to compression software and decompression hardware for video improving which also eases high quality media distribution. A two hour HEVC 1080p movie looks and sounds pretty darn good at a 5GB file size.

Good enough for you, the hardcore enthusiast? No, but good enough for the 98 percent.

You can also add Reason 6: Disc rot.

When music CDs came out we thought they were more durable than vinyl because, unlike a needle on a record, the optical sensor of a CD player required no physical contact with the medium on order to play the music. Furthermore, we live surrounded by plastic, and most plastic objects last basically forever unless we deliberately destroy them. And so would CDs, right?

Wrong.

Too late, we found that the thin layers in the disc could separate and degrade while sitting on a shelf for weeks or months. At least LPs and cassettes didn't do that. I still have a few original issue Beatles LPs which, despite a few hisses and pops here and there, still play better than the CDs I bought in the late 1990s and early 2000s

Also 7: Something that always bothered me about CDs was the fact that they needed to rapidly spin in order to work. Why? It made no sense for a digital medium. Today, with storage so cheap, there should be NO moving parts in a music system besides the control mechanisms, speaker cones, and peripheral components such as cooling fans

I will never buy a CD again no matter how much it can store.

 

[GTvon]

Well, companies have shown that buying a lifetime viewing license can be revoked and can't cmbe transfered to other platforms.

Franky, the state of digital media sucks. It's not that I'm un willing to pay for things, I'd happily buy something I watch and keep it somewhere. The thing is, everything is a subscription now and there is no buying option. Piracy offers a better user experience and it's free. On top of that, all the subscription services are MORE expensive than cable and some subscription services add ads into stuff even when you do pay for it. It's either ad supported and free or it's a pay subscription, not both.

You have to be a real low life with zero self respect to consider theft a viable option.

 

[GTvon]

You can also add Reason 6: Disc rot.

When music CDs came out we thought they were more durable than vinyl because, unlike a needle on a record, the optical sensor of a CD player required no physical contact with the medium on order to play the music. Furthermore, we live surrounded by plastic, and most plastic objects last basically forever unless we deliberately destroy them. And so would CDs, right?

Wrong.

Too late, we found that the thin layers in the disc could separate and degrade while sitting on a shelf for weeks or months. At least LPs and cassettes didn't do that. I still have a few original issue Beatles LPs which, despite a few hisses and pops here and there, still play better than the CDs I bought in the late 1990s and early 2000s

Also 7: Something that always bothered me about CDs was the fact that they needed to rapidly spin in order to work. Why? It made no sense for a digital medium. Today, with storage so cheap, there should be NO moving parts in a music system besides the control mechanisms, speaker cones, and peripheral components such as cooling fans

I will never buy a CD again no matter how much it can store.

The mdisks took disc degradation out of the equation with discs that last hundreds of years.

 

[Brickwizard]

One advantage is that Optical storage is not affected by EMP /EMF as Ferrite [magnetic] recording or SSD's are, so if you're a doom and gloomer, keep all electrical kit and storage devices un- plugged in a Faraday cage

 

[yRaz]

You have to be a real low life with zero self respect to consider theft a viable option.

I didn't know not allowing companies to take advantage of and steal from me meant I had zero self respect and was a low life.

I will happily take on the title of low life if it means standing up for my rights as a consumer.

If buying isn't owning then pirating isn't stealing.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

For online, what's there today might be gone tomorrow, and you might have to subscribe to another platform to find them. If you just move from one work to another, then this should not bother you at all.

For offline, some points to consider are cost per gigabyte or similar, how long the medium lasts, how much can you afford to buy for each purchase, and how much physical storage space you have. If you don't collect a lot, then these should not affect you that much.

For example, in some countries, if you compare a 4 TB hard drive, a 64 GB thumb drive, and a blank DVD with the MCC manufacturing code, you'll notice that cost per gigabyte is roughly the same: around 3 to 4 U.S. cents. Prices, of course, may vary given quality, brand, if you buy those with a lot of storage (where the cost should go down per GB), etc.

For longevity, given good quality for reasonable prices plus regular access, it should be around 20 years for disks, maybe 10 years for thumb drives, and around 5-7 years for hard drives.

Meanwhile, disks face issues like disk rot while hard drives and flash drives may fail. There are other issues, like loss being more catastrophic for hard drives, less for thumb drives, and even less for disks (as the content is spread out among more disks), storage space (around 6 drawer boxes of disks vs. one book-size box containing around 60 thumb drives vs. one hard drive), etc.

A very rational and accurate assessment of the pros and cons of the most common mediums for storage backup. As I read it, I can't help but think that optical media still wins but I'm biased or maybe wisdom leads me down the same path each time I consider these options.

They're all good, but we have to view each storage medium in the proper context and use cases.

The comment about the everyday Joe running a Plex server (or any other sever) at home as the sole source of global warming....that's some funny stuff....let me utter 2 words....no wait...I'll be more succinct than that even....2 letters....AI?

Well, and then there's crypto miners running their ISHT 24/7/365 but I'm not here to judge. Original point being that consumer home servers would be a speck of sand on all the worlds beaches compared to the other 2.

 

[Tioric]

I didn't know not allowing companies to take advantage of and steal from me meant I had zero self respect and was a low life.

I will happily take on the title of low life if it means standing up for my rights as a consumer.

If buying isn't owning then pirating isn't stealing.

 

[Tioric]

I'm going all in on the low life club..and love that motto : " If buying isn't owning then pirating isn't stealing " ..classic

 

[Homer100]

No mention of exactly how big this storage could be. An important piece of info.

 

[colemar]

I get the impression that those leaning towards optical disk storage versus cloud storage "suffer" from some sort of fetishism.
I myself am guilty of that, in fact I miss the days of musicassettes.

 

[Deathdealers747]

The problem that the researchers aim to solve is the diffraction limit of light in standard CDs and DVDs. Current optical storage has a hard cap on data density because each single bit can't be smaller than the wavelength of the reading/writing laser.

Why doesn't someone just make a new laser that works better for larger data storage and/or faster data storage drives?

Also, does anybody know if creation of DVDs, Blu-Rays, and CDs affects the research and creation of HDD Platters at all or vice-versa? I would think so, but I have no idea if those industries ever affect each other.

Also, I miss Mini-CDs. I currently have a Super Multi-Drive in my PC Optical Drive it plays Blu-rays, DVDs, CDs, and Mini-CDs. These days Motherboards that cost $200+ don't even come with a Mini-CD, a USB Flashdrive, or an SD Card with preloaded Software, Drivers, or an Instruction Manual PDF file. Just a decade ago that was still a "thing."

 

[ChrisH1]

We had a higher-than-CD quality thing, it was called a 'music DVD', being a DVD with an ordinary CD layer on top so it could be played in an ordinary CD player (which was clever) and additional information in the lower layers that a special player could read, and provide a higher bitrate, dynamic range, etc. Sound was as good as and theoretically even better than the best vinyl. It didn't catch on, because it was more expensive, and ordinary CD quality is just fine for anyone other than keen-eared audiophiles.

Similarly, a DVD can hold a whole movie. If you want it in super quality 4K, blu-ray does that.

Unless these new disks are used for data storage and are robust and not scratch-sensitive, I don't see what advantage they offer.

 

[TorQueMoD]

Yeah, because a new storage medium that uses rare Earth metals is EXACTLY what we need. lol
Sometimes scientists blow my mind at how absolutely stupid they can be.

 

[Deathdealers747]

Yeah, because a new storage medium that uses rare Earth metals is EXACTLY what we need. lol
Sometimes scientists blow my mind at how absolutely stupid they can be.

This happens when they're stuck in a lab which acts as their petri dish and they don't get out much.

 

[bobman]

If it was such a dead format they would be selling for a dollar a bucket full.

But they are dirt cheap. I go to hundreds of garage sales in a season and all the cds, dvds and blurays are 25 cents to $1 each and no one is buying them. Maybe 1 or 2 here and there, but if they were valuable, people would be dropping $10 to $20 and buying all of them.

 

[captaincranky]

I get the impression that those leaning towards optical disk storage versus cloud storage "suffer" from some sort of fetishism.
I myself am guilty of that, in fact I miss the days of musicassettes.

I miss those days myself.... After all who wouldn't wank to di*k around cleaning pinch rollers with a Q-tip? Or standing there for hours with a screwdriver, trying to set the azimuth, only to find the tape deck's bias isn't set correctly for the brand new "super high frequency response", tape formulation, that set you back about $6.00 a pop for a 45 minute "joyride" into "mixed tape land".

You see, I too wanted that $800.00 Nakamichi three header, but could never quite afford one.

And don't even get me started on, "run it as fast as you can to get the enormous 360i resolution it presents", VHS tape. They were $6.00 a pop too.

I'm sincerely hoping that you were joking with that post.

 

[captaincranky]

You can also add Reason 6: Disc rot.

When music CDs came out we thought they were more durable than vinyl because, unlike a needle on a record, the optical sensor of a CD player required no physical contact with the medium on order to play the music. Furthermore, we live surrounded by plastic, and most plastic objects last basically forever unless we deliberately destroy them. And so would CDs, right?

Wrong.

Too late, we found that the thin layers in the disc could separate and degrade while sitting on a shelf for weeks or months. At least LPs and cassettes didn't do that. I still have a few original issue Beatles LPs which, despite a few hisses and pops here and there, still play better than the CDs I bought in the late 1990s and early 2000s

Also 7: Something that always bothered me about CDs was the fact that they needed to rapidly spin in order to work. Why? It made no sense for a digital medium. Today, with storage so cheap, there should be NO moving parts in a music system besides the control mechanisms, speaker cones, and peripheral components such as cooling fans

I will never buy a CD again no matter how much it can store.

You poor baby. I can only imagine the heartbreak and suffering you experienced when that disc melted down. I'm sure the modern mental health community could help you move past it, provided you have suitable health insurance. Which BTW, only pays about 50%, of "crying over spilled milk sessions", with a licensed charlatan. (Sorry, I meant "therapist").

Did you know that Windows, at least from XP on up, will rip CDs losslessly?

Which means that, if you hurry before a disc self destructs, you can store its entire contents on your HDD, (or SSD), and burn a many damned copies as you want. After which, you can take the entire "music folder", and transfer that to another computer. So let's see, now we have the original which will never be played, just stored in its case. Copies of the disc on two (2) different computers, and as many CDs @10 cents a pop as you feel you need to hide your uncertainties and insecurities.

I've actually never seen disc rot. Although I admit to keeping my house temperature wise from 68 to 79 F and lower than 60% RH.

 

[Jeff Murray]

I am all for this but Hollywood, the Gaming Industry and other DRM Bolsheviks will try to kill this.