2y ago

Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete | TechRadar

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Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete

Those totally look like the isolinear chips from Star Trek

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2y ago

Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete

www.techradar.com /pro/video-of-ceramic-storage-system-prototype-surfaces-online-10000tb-cartridges-bombarded-with-laser-rays-could-become-mainstream-by-2030-making-slow-hard-drives-and-tapes-obsolete

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2y ago

Video of ceramic storage system prototype surfaces online — 10,000TB cartridges bombarded with laser rays could become mainstream by 2030, making slow hard drives and tapes obsolete

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2y ago

10,000TB storage cartridges could become mainstream by 2030

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Data is written by two million laser beamlets that punch QR code-like nano-scale patterns into the surface of the media. The laser pulse is sharpened by a digital micromirror device, and shaped by microscope optics onto the surface of the data carrier. This process imprints holes – or no holes – onto the surface layer, which represents binary information.
It’s futuristic punchcards. We’ve come full circle.
- It’s futuristic punchcards.
  always was.
  
  Pretty much, yeah! CDs and blu-rays aren’t all that different from punch cards, as the data is literally stored as indentations on the disc with a reflective layer. Arguably CD-RWs are kind of different as they change the reflectivity of a material itself… Hard drives and floppies are maaaaybe slightly different too because they use changes in magnetism instead of physical indentations too. You could probably argue that flash and DRAM aren’t glorified punchcards? But I mean, ultimately all data is stored in a physical medium somehow so it’s always going to have some resemblance!
  
  Tapes and spinning disks were futuristic magnetized wire.
- Or even eched tablets, we've double backed on the full circle.
  
  "Alright class, pull out your chisel and slate.."
- Sounds like it would be difficult to rewrite/edit the data?
- A punchcard is two dimensional. Actually you can have multiple dimensions on a punch card, the positions of the card can store different data and you can determine what that is by the position of holes on another part of the card.
  Whereas a paper tape, or a magnetic tape is serial and has only one dimension (you can divide the tape into different bands though).
I've been seeing news stories like this every couple of years for most of my life, and yet storage technology just continues to plod along at the same pace it always has. Nothing ever comes of it.
- Just as you probably never see tape storage, you would never see this storage method either, as it's not intended for personal use.
  However, while you do not see tape storage being used, it's maybe what the majority of world's storage uses.
- It's a sensational headline, sure - but I manage a few 200TB single unit servers at work and my cell phone has more than 20x the storage the computer I took to college had, and probably 20x faster.
  To claim what you are ignores the significant improvements we've seen in the past 2 decades.
  
  Obviously I'm not saying storage technology doesn't improve. But it's incremental improvements, not exponential like these stories always claim.
- Same. It's kind of a shame that folks forgot the word "vaporware" and what it means.
  
  Vaporware is when software devs make claims about how great their yet-to-be-written software will be. Then, they never create it, either out of a lack of skill, time, or funding. Vaporware has, by definition, no proof of concept.
  Hardware is a bit harder to call “Vaporware” since presumably they have working prototypes.
So am I wrong to say this is a stone tablet hard drive? Doesn't seem like you can overwrite data on it
- Yeah, looks like write once. Which, we got a lot of mileage out of CD-Rs, libraries are useful.
  
  I feel like we don’t appreciate the history of data storage enough! It’s kind of wild looking at how different the world was when CD-Rs came out. They could store substantially more data than a typical hard drive of the time and were dirt cheap. So you would get bulletin boards hosting content from optical drives and stuff. It’s also (partially) why you would have to use discs for games in the past, instead of just installing them to the hard drive. When hard drives are expensive it’s probably better to just stream music and assets from an optical disc instead of taking up precious space. Sometimes you could play a game (or part of it) without the disc, but you wouldn’t get music because that was left on the disc.
  
  I would even argue most storage is used as write once storage. From backup systems to libraries, a lot of data is data we want to just record, and never overwrite.
- You don't need to. These are intended for backups and data archiving where storage density matters the most
  
  Seems like thered be some extra hoops to get through for differential backups, impossible to us for most daily applications, probably better suited for things like laboratory and archives..
- It looks like you can’t overwrite new data, but you can still punch it full of ones :p
So like CD-Rs but with silica instead of organics.
I like the idea.
- Seems more like a standard CD. It can only be written on once.
  
  CD-R is the standard CD. CD-RWs are the rewritable ones.
  
  CD-ROMs are read-only(-memory) & usually stamped plastic covered with mirror-ish surface (aluminum-somethings prob?).
  CD-R have an (recordable) organic layer on top you can burn lil patterns into, once only.
  CD-RW can be re-written several times.
  But none of them really last long.
Based on the demo video I'm assuming this is more for archival storage rather than on demand. So more like a tape replacement rather than hard drive?
- Yes. Hugely important topic in itself. M-Disc is the current best we have, with claims they will last 1000 years if properly stored (limited by the plastic degredation). But ceramics should be more stable, and the speed claims look good. This is not the only tech solution vying to be a long term contender but looks like a potential good one.
- That's the impression I'm getting from it too
The firm claims it's cost-effective, fast, and scalable technology for future data storage because no energy is consumed to store data and it can last more than 5,000 years due to the fact it's made from ceramic. The best hard drives and best SSDs, by contrast, need to be replaced every few years.
lol, they for real discovered something that was discovered 12,000 years ago. ceramic keeps for a long time.
- I'm pretty sure their discoveries here are not the material properties of ceramics, but how to turn them into cost effective digital storage devices.
  
  He who keeps the old akindle, and adds new knowledge, is fit to be ~~a teacher~~ an inventor.
That thumbnail looks cool
Storage tech isn't as sensationalized and vapor-heavy as battery tech, but I do still wish holographic versatile discs had been a thing.

47 comments