At present, optical storage devices (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray) are practically in disuse, except for some movies that still come out in Blu-Ray format and of course the games on consoles, but it is undeniable that each time they are used less in favor of other USB media. However, a team of scientists has now managed to develop optical discs with no less than 700 TB of capacity, will it be the resurgence of this storage medium in the industry?
Obviously, it is much more convenient for users to carry their data from one place to another on a simple USB pen drive or even on an external hard disk or SSD, smaller, lighter and easier to transport than an optical disk. However, these have the disadvantage that they are easier to lose and the ease with which they spoil is also greater, so even though the optical disc industry seems to be almost dead, scientists are still working on their development.
700 TB optical drives, the future of storage?
According to published reports, a joint team from the University of Shanghai in China, the Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia and the National University of Singapore have demonstrated a new mechanism to effectively improve the storage density that these optical discs can have, reaching up to 700 TB capacity in the first stage of laboratory testing. To put this in perspective, it equates to 28,000 25GB Blu-Ray discs.
The researchers believe that although laser optical data storage is the best option to meet the growing demand for data, the different nature of light limits the size of the bits of information that can be recorded, which in turn limits the storage capacity of optical discs. To overcome this barrier, they have used a new nanocomposite material that combines graphene oxide flakes and up-converting nanoparticles (UCNP) to achieve a data density unprecedented to date.
The researchers also found that the technology uses an inexpensive continuous-wave laser, which will help to significantly reduce the operating costs of reading and writing units, compared to expensive traditional optical recording technology. The researchers said that while progress still needs to be made to optimize this technology, preliminary research results have opened up new ways to meet the global data challenges we live in today, and this technology will be suitable for the mass production of discs. optics so it has great potential.
To go back or not to go back to optical storage, that's the question
As we have denoted at the beginning of the article, today optical storage is hardly used anymore, and in general in the hardware industry PC cases already come without 5.25 ″ bays for DVD / BR drives, and In fact, it is quite difficult to find these units in stores. Optical storage has gradually disappeared in favor of other media such as external disks and USB pen drives since they are much more comfortable to use and easy to manufacture and transport, but the advantages in terms of the durability of optical disks leave no room for doubts regarding its advantages.
Its main disadvantage so far is its limited capacity, since a normal Blu-Ray has 25 GB of capacity and today we can buy finger-size USB pen drives with capacities of up to 1 TB for very little money. However, what if they suddenly start shipping 700 TB capacity optical discs? Could this encourage your resurgence in the consumer market?
The answer as always is that it depends: according to our point of view, these units have the potential to be re-marketed but it will depend on the price of both the discs and the reader/writer units, and also on whether or not these discs will be rewritable as remember that there are CDs, DVDs and Blu-Rays that are rewritable and are for single-use, something that greatly limits their use.
Of course, optical discs have many disadvantages and just thinking about having a closet full of filing cabinets full of them gives us goosebumps, but it is undeniable that if 700 TB capacity units reach the market at reasonable prices, certainly the benefits would be well worth it.
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