Extraordinary news these days: the optical disc suddenly seems to be back on the scene as one is being developed with a storage capacity of 200 TB.
Chinese researchers at Shanghai University of Science and Engineering have developed a technique that allows 200 TB to be stored on an optical disk. And by “optical disc,” we mean something very similar to a CD recordable or DVD recordable of yesteryear. The trick lies in using new light-sensitive material and stacking layers. We are talking about even hundreds of layers here. Magazine Nature was the first to report the invention. As you can see though, you have to pay for the complete article.
Lifespan?
The invention sounds very nice. But at the same time we must remember that optical, rewritable media eventually went down in history as a fail. In the end, the organic layer on which the data was burned by a laser proved far from withstanding the test of time. CD and DVD rot caused many a headache regarding data once stored and no longer accessible. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese included this aspect in their investigations. And even if it has been considered, we will not have a definitive answer until about five to ten years after introduction. And of course a totally new generation of burners is needed for the proposed optical disc. In short: a very nice dream to backup all your movies, music and photos on one disk. But whether it will ever really come true…?