25TB titanium oxide 'super discs' in the works?

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Matthew DeCarlo

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Japanese researchers have discovered a material that could be used to make low-cost discs with a storage capacity that puts existing storage media to shame. Described as a new crystal form of titanium oxide, the material switches from a black-color metal state that conducts electricity to a brown semiconductor when exposed to light, according to Shin-ichi Ohkoshi of the University of Tokyo. That transformation occurs at room temperature and provides an on-off function for data storage.

Ohkoshi says the material is promising for next-generation optical storage, and his team has successfully created the material in particles measuring 5-to-20nm, the AFP reports. It's said that the new disc could hold over 1,000 times more data than a Blu-ray disc – or upwards of 25TB. Furthermore, titanium oxide is substantially cheaper than the rare element germanium-antimony-tellurium, which is used in Blu-ray discs and DVDs, and it's already used in products ranging from face powder to white paint.

There's no telling when such discs will hit the market, but Ohkoshi will start talks with private-sector companies for "commercialization."

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Nice.
I'm sure it will be much cheaper than having 25TB of hard drive space.:)
 
just get 1/0,025 from porn on the net
that's should be answer the previous comment ;)
 
Umm, can you imagine how small that is? They can't make CPU's any more without isolating the manufacturing equipment from the floor because the Earth is too wobbly. And that's the scale they're discussing here. Am I going to need vibration isolation dampeners on my computers now?
 
Imagine the possibilities for large companies to use these as a disaster recovery medium. When threatened by a hurricane, just grab the discs and gtfo.
 
remember when floppies came out and this was the idea of the future..
the future of tech is truly gonna be the next 20 years.
 
Well in 2015 when Moore's Law is relinquished, I'd say instead of physical media and moving parts we will be only dealing with light, holograms, spintronics, and quantum computing. Basically this will never stop and there will always be something better just around the corner. You would think we would be trying to move away from using anything that could be damaged. Imagine scratching or losing a 25TB disc? What about write speed and read speed? Holy crap that would take a long time to burn or rip. The way tech advances it could be a while even after something like this came about that we actually had a fast enough drive to make it feasible to use.
 
Love it! I come on here to see the comments and apparently the best thing to fill a 25TB Disc with is Porn! Love it! =)
 
Great idea, but if we can't just go from 25 GB disks to 25 TB disks. I'd be totally happy with 1 or 2 TB, disks, but 25 TB are impractical at this point. Even if you were going to have full 50 GB BD rips, it would hold 500 movies. Sure a few years from now it might change, but I don't think the average person would have that much data to back up.

Then you're looking at burning these disks. I'm guessing this will be a process that takes days. You're probably looking at a dedicated computer just to be used as a giant burner, with some kind of crazy buffer. You'd have to run them at very slow speed to avoid a very expensive coaster. And as someone said, what if you lose or scratch it? You'd probably need to have the discs inside a special enclosure that prevents actual contact with the disk itself, by anything other than the computer.

I love optical disks for the price and storage, but as far as a long term storage medium, they're horrible. They get scratched, fingerprints, etc.
 
i'm hoping by the time this super disc is available, your average pc will be fast enough to actually read/write it, if it were available tomorrow it might take 2 hr to copy it!
 
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