DVD Writers Could Hit 16X in 2004

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,108277,tk,dn122602X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article...n122602X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div>Suddenly my Pioneer A04 seems badly outclassed! 8O I love technology! :D <br /><br />"Mitsubishi Electric has developed a more powerful semiconductor laser that should pave the way for 16X DVD writers to be commercially available by about 2004. The new laser is able to deliver pulses of light at a power of 200 milliwatts, which is double that of lasers used in today's 4X DVD writer drives, the Tokyo company said this week.<br /><br />...For users, the eventual arrival of 16X drives will bring big benefits. At that speed drives will be capable of writing data at 176 megabits per second (mbps) which means a complete 4.7GB DVD disc can be written in three and a half minutes, according to Mitsubishi. That compares with around 14 minutes for today's fastest 4X drives and almost an hour for a first-generation drive."

[ECOslin]

It's like 'drive inflation', programs take up more and more space, often to do the same thing. Will 4.7Gb in 2004 be the same thing as 4.7GB in 2002? Very probably not.

Speed is good though, I expect some other companies, given this announcement will work to trample this deadline into the dust.

I've been intending to buy a 120Gb drive, haven't quite gotten around to do it, yet. I'd like to see a CDr, simular or new technology be able to back up half, on the fly and in one shot. I've got XP and I'm no longer really sure what parts I should back up anymore, it being so large and accumulative an OS. Some computer games and productivity programs even take up as much as 600Mb installed.

Edward

[Janak Parekh]

It's like 'drive inflation', programs take up more and more space, often to do the same thing. Will 4.7Gb in 2004 be the same thing as 4.7GB in 2002? Very probably not.
Good point, and backing up 120GB is no easy task (not Gb, btw ;)) with DVD's now. It'll get worse when we have 500GB disks.

Your best (but not necessarily cheapest) bet if you want to back things up in one shot is either a tape drive, like the Ecrix (www.ecrix.com) VXA-1 66GB brand, or mirrored/removable hard drives. Each have their positives and drawbacks.

I do a mash of things. I tend to only back up a data folder which I point every program to write files into; I don't care if my Unreal Tournament data files are lost. I do this backup by a smorgasboard of mirroring content between different machines and burning CD's. I'm looking at getting an Ecrix or a fast DVD-R to do snapshots though.

--janak

[Foo Fighter]

I love technology! :D

So do I, but it seems like I end up spending half my income just trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. Pretty soon I'll be selling one of my kidneys to support my tech addiction. :turn-l:

[sponge]

Will HDs and other perephials be fast enough to stream this much data at once?

[Jason Dunn]

I do a mash of things. I tend to only back up a data folder which I point every program to write files into; I don't care if my Unreal Tournament data files are lost.

I do the same thing. Hard drive capacity will likely always outstrip disc-based media. It's not realistic or probable to buy a 200 GB hard drive and expect to back it all up. :D My biggest data would be the 60 or so GB of MP3s I have, and that data exists on a whole whack of CD's. It would be cool so have it exist on a handful of DVDs, but when it comes to 40 GB of video data, backing up that amount of data just won't fly...unless you have a second hard drive and can mirror it.

I love this topic. :-)

[Rirath]

Some computer games and productivity programs even take up as much as 600Mb installed.

That seems a pretty mild figure... Baulder's Gate II runs at least 2GB, Unreal Tournament 2003 installs at a whopping 3GB. It's space well spent though, not just bloat. Apps are up there as well, look at programs like 3ds Max. But, at the low price of storage these days, let em take as much space as they need to do the job right. Fine by me.

I personally use two 80GB drives, one at 7200 for apps and games, one at 5400 for storage.

[nobody]

I would actually like to see DVD writer price going down first.

[Bob Anderson]

Will HDs and other perephials be fast enough to stream this much data at once?

That's the first thing that crossed my mind too... but if it can burn at 176Mbps, and Firewire and USB2 can handle data streams at 400Mbps (or should I be saying MBps...???) I think our current systems could "feed" these faster drives.

Here I thought getting that new Sony combo DVD burner would be the best you could ask for!!! Jeesh... it's time for a raise! :lol:

[Janak Parekh]

Will HDs and other perephials be fast enough to stream this much data at once?
Probably. ATA/133 is 133 megaBYTES per second, which is much, much faster than 176mbps.

--janak

[Janak Parekh]

I do the same thing. Hard drive capacity will likely always outstrip disc-based media. It's not realistic or probable to buy a 200 GB hard drive and expect to back it all up.
Video is one interesting problem with no easy answer other than, perhaps, removable/mirrored hard drives, which are cheap.

Doing business infrastructure backup is another problem, where you've got 200GB of data you must back up. The solution there is very, very, very, very (did I mention very?) expensive tape technology.

I still remember the days when tapes used to far outstrip disk capacities. No more.

--janak

[The Big Jay]

Suddenly my Pioneer A04 seems badly outclassed! 8O I love technology! :D

"Mitsubishi Electric has developed a more powerful semiconductor laser that should pave the way for 16X DVD writers to be commercially available by about 2004. The new laser is able to deliver pulses of light at a power of 200 milliwatts, which is double that of lasers used in today's 4X DVD writer drives, the Tokyo company said this week.

...For users, the eventual arrival of 16X drives will bring big benefits. At that speed drives will be capable of writing data at 176 megabits per second (mbps) which means a complete 4.7GB DVD disc can be written in three and a half minutes, according to Mitsubishi. That compares with around 14 minutes for today's fastest 4X drives and almost an hour for a first-generation drive."

That's nice. I can't even find 10x CD-RW media except by Sony.

[Janak Parekh]

That's nice. I can't even find 10x CD-RW media except by Sony.
I'm pretty sure this is referring to 16X DVD-R, not DVD-+RW. RW is a much harder problem technologywise to speed up. I don't even use CD-RW most of the time, since CD-R media is so cheap and you can get much faster speeds.

--janak

[Gamma Ray]

Jason, I don't own a DVD burner so please help me over some bad information I may have. I always thought that the base rate for the X in optical disk speeds was 150 KiloBytes per second as in the first CDROM drives. If that is the case, 16X means 2.34MegaBytes per second and that means 35 minutes to burn a full DVD. If what you have published is right, that means the base speed for DVDs is different than CDROMs at 1.5MBs per second which would yield about 24MBs per second at 16X. Please advise on this...

[Janak Parekh]

If what you have published is right, that means the base speed for DVDs is different than CDROMs
Yes, DVD's base speeds are definitely not the same as CD-ROM's. A quick Google search imples that the base speed of a DVD-ROM is 1.32 megabytes/second.

--janak

[Gamma Ray]

Janak, thanks! Your figures are close to my guess so those speeds at 16X have to be real and are pretty incredible. The question now becomes, can a normal computer sustain a data transfer of 24MBs per second over four minutes or are we talking about some kind of super-duper scsi connections for these drives?

[Janak Parekh]

Check my earlier post. :)

--janak

[sponge]

Probably. ATA/133 is 133 megaBYTES per second, which is much, much faster than 176mbps.

--janak

Oops.. blasted mbps

[st63z]

They need to make a lot bigger 1.8/2.5" HDDs at much cheaper prices...

Also has anyone tested native/OS hot-plug support for Serial ATA, how well does it work?

[The Big Jay]

That's nice. I can't even find 10x CD-RW media except by Sony.
I'm pretty sure this is referring to 16X DVD-R, not DVD-+RW. RW is a much harder problem technologywise to speed up. I don't even use CD-RW most of the time, since CD-R media is so cheap and you can get much faster speeds.

--janak

Oh I know janak. I just think it's ironic they have 24x CD-RW writers and only 10x media.

The reason I use CD-RW is that sometimes I'll have "utility" disks for use. Don't like USB Flash keys and it's hard to install drivers on school computers.