AWKWARD ZOMBIE

There's no reason at all it would be used for movies though, Blu-Ray discs are already large enough for whatever you want in that regard.
Also:
1: Like I said, its too slow to read to be used as a hard drive. Its just a very large storage device.
2: Hard drives are disc-shaped!

Well, I knew I'd screw up like that. This is what happens when I talk about anything after all.

I'm sorry for my ignorance...

You idiot. it's not going to be used as a hard drive. It'll be used just for storage, just like discs are today. Except a really, really big storage space that doesn't suck up the capacity of YOUR hard drive.

Okay, I'm confused. Are you calling Zink the idiot for saying that it would be, which is very much overkill, or are you calling me the idiot for... making the same point you did?

Old news. When they're talking about "5 dimensions" they mean your normal 3 spacial dimensions, a "color" dimension, and a polarization dimension. From my understanding, by color they mean using reader that can read from several different wavelength. By polarization, they mean being able to record/read from different directions (i.e. reading information along 0 degrees from a central axis wouldn't interfere with reading information along 90 degrees from a central axis.)

Apparently this is all done with gold nanotubes or something. I'll have to find that story in one of the journals I subscribe to.

Edit: LOL misspelling...

Your post implies that the disc being used as a hard drive. Where did you get such an idea from? They're most likely going to fix this if it ever DOES get commercialized, if you're talking about it being 'slow'.

@everyone above

These discs aren't intended for consumer consumption. They are being marketed towards military/medical applications for long term storage of data (since, you know, they're made out of freakin' gold). We will probably never see these on shelves.

I can't find the article I read out of IEEE but here's a press release from the researchers that is far more detailed than that drivel from CNN.

Because I have nothing smart to say about this.

I was replying to Zink's post, where he said "Essentially, it will just be a disc-shaped hard drive".

Heck, I even pointed out that he said it in the post you just quoted.


When I say "slow", I mean "slower than current hard drives of the same size". There's practically no way a disc reader could be faster.

You're wrong because of data density. Basically if they're able to put more information into a smaller section the distance the reader needs to travel to read the same amount of information would be smaller. This, in turn, allows for faster read times.

Simple proof: Burn a VCD and a DVD with the same video (provided they both fit) Check the time it takes for a media player to load said video. You should see the DVD has a faster load time because it has a higher data density.

And some numbers:

CD - 0.9 Gbit/in^2
DVD - 2.2 Gbit/in^2
BR - 12.5 Gbit/in^2
Current HDD - 150 - 250 Gbit/in^2
Estimate Max Density for HDD - ~1000 Gbit/in^2
Estimate* Density for UHC Discs - ~771 Gbit/in^2

(This is assuming UHC Discs have the same track spacing as DVDs.)

I'd rather have a 1.6 TB pen-drive.

I think everyone in this thread needs to stop being so confident that he or she is always right.

I mean, at least that's what I think...

Huh. I was under the assumption the instrument used also mattered. Since HDDs are air-tight interference-free, and can interact with the disc more precisely, it was faster. Sure, the data density mattered, but I didn't think that much.