James Fee
09-29-2004, 01:00 AM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3696306.stm' target='_blank'>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3696306.stm</a><br /><br /></div>"<i>Imperial College London researchers in the UK are developing a new way of storing data that could lead to discs capable of holding 1,000 gigabytes. It means that every episode of The Simpsons could fit on a disc the size of a normal DVD. Lecturer Dr Peter Torok revealed the technique called Multiplexed Optical Data Storage (Mods) at the Asia-Pacific Data Storage Conference 2004 in Taiwan. DVDs are one of the most successful consumer products in history. Most DVDs have two layers and can hold up to 8.5GB. One technology, HD-DVD (High Definition DVD), can hold up to 30GB, while a rival format called Blu-ray offers 50GB of storage. The technique developed by the Imperial College team could offer much more on a disc. The researchers believe their technique could be used to create a disc with four layers, each with 250GBs - the equivalent of 118 hours of video per layer. A four-layer DVD could hold one terabyte (1,000Gbs) of data, enough for 472 hours of film, or every episode of The Simpsons ever made.</i>"<br /><br />I'm not sure where this will go, but being able to carry a terabyte of data in my pocket sounds good to me. Considering that the U.S. Library of Congress (the world's largest library) contains about 20 terabytes of text, this is quite an accomplishment.