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Scientist Talks 1-Petabyte 'Hyper' CD With 5,000-Year Lifetime

by Caleb Johnson on June 7, 2010 at 06:50 PM

rainbow petabyte cd behind mountain
While we have out doubts, a Romanian scientist claims the CD isn't dead just yet. In fact, he says its potential hasn't even been fully-tapped. According to Engadget, Eugene Pavel, founder of Storex Technologies, claims he could create a "Hyper" CD that would store 1,000,000 gigabytes of information. Not only could this Hyper disc hold a petabyte (yes, that's what you call all those zeroes) of data, but Pavel says it would have a 5,000-year lifetime. In other words, your graduate dissertation, photos from summer vacation or punk-rock mix would endure long after your expiration date has passed. It's all centered around patents that Storex has based on "glass and glass-ceramics compositions as well as read/write mechanics and optics concept(s) applicable to high-density data storage," which means packing a lot of data into harder, more dense digital spaces.

This all sounds wonderful, but it also sounds like it desperately needs a proof-of-concept prototype. Right now, Pavel's claims are based on complex theories and not much else. We aren't going to get too excited about leaving our entire legacy of LOLcats behind until he has some hard evidence that suggests a "Hyper" CD is even possible. [From: Engadget]

Tags: cd, data, datastorage, eugene pavel, EugenePavel, hyper cd, HyperCd, petabyte, PetabyteStorage, research, storage, StorexTechnologies, top

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