Scientists develop massive optical disc Super DVD for 1 petabit

Researchers at the Shanghai University of Science and Technology have just figured out how to put up to a petabyte of data on an optical disc, storing the information in 3D. In other words, that's 125,000 gigabytes on a single DVD-sized disc.

Until now, optical discs such as DVDs and Blu-rays have been limited in their storage capacity, storing data in only one layer. However, the new technique allows up to 100 layers of data to be read and written in a space of just 54 nanometres.

The technique behind this groundbreaking disc required the development of an entirely new material known as a photoresist, mixed with phosphors and other components. This material, labelled AIE-DDPR, provides a homogeneous and transparent film that is easily processed by lasers at the nanoscale and opens up new possibilities for data storage.

In terms of capacity, it is significantly larger than what can be achieved with flash drives or even a hybrid hard drive (HHD). A single optical disc is approximately 1.2 millimetres high. An HHD drive array that could hold a petabyte of data would be approximately 200 centimetres high. An equivalent Blu-ray array is over 2 metres tall.

Source: Gizmodo