Optical discs isn't just used by regular consumers to burn CDs and DVDs but is also used for other things, e.g. long term storage where they usually use discs of higher capacity. Now Hitachi Maxell has found a way to radically increase the storage capacity of such solutions, through a new kind of optical disc. The new disc is superthin and less than 0.1mm thick, you can compare this to a CD/DVD which measures 1.2mm. By using cartridges with hundreds of these discs you can create very small storage solutions with very high capacity.
Hitachi Maxell has displayed protoypes of its optical discs at Ceatec in Japan which used DVD technology and thus had a capacity of 4.7GB. It said that you would be able to put a hundred of these discs into a cartridge which will be just a few centimeters thick and be able to store up to 470GB.
"The cartridge slots into a dedicated drive and the discs are pulled out of the cartridge automatically by a mechanism inside the unit and mounted into the drive."
This technology is different from other optical formats HM has usually aimed fit as mush space as possible onto a single disc. The technology is called SVOD, Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc. Hitachi Maxell is basically done developing the technology but is stilll waiting for a commerical solution. It is at least aiming for a launch on the retail market and says that a cartridge in the size of a miditower chassis would be able to containt up to 4.7TB while a 19" rack model would hold triple that.
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Superthin optical disc may offer mighty storage capacity
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