Just when you thought optical discs were on their way to be forgotten, this happens…

Source and full article: https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-super-dvd-scientists-develop-massive-1-petabi-1851272615

“Researchers from Scientists from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology just figured out how to fit up to a petabit of data onto an optical disk by storing information in 3D. In other words, that’s 125,000 gigabytes on a single DVD-sized disk, or what experts refer to as a “big boy.”

“This could greatly reduce the footprint as well as the energy consumption of the future big data centers, providing a sustainable solution for the digital economy,” said Min Gu, a professor at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and one of the paper’s co-authors.

In terms of volume, that’s dramatically more capacity than you can get with a flash drive or even a hybrid hard drive (HHD). To put that into perspective, a single optical disk is about 1.2 millimeters high. An array of HHD drives that could fit a petabit of data would be about 200 centimeters high. An equivalent array of Blu-Ray storage would be over 2 meters high.”