Hitachi has come up with the thinnest optical disc that can store terabytes of information. The thickness of the disc is 1/10th of a millimeter, many of these can be stacked together in a small space to store large amount of data. Working prototypes were shown in ceatec Japan 2006 in Chiba, Japan.
These discs are based on DVD technology and each holds 4.7GB of data. These Stacked Volumetric Optical Disc (SVOD)are housed in a protective sleeve inside the cartridge. The cartridge slots into a dedicated drive and the discs are pulled out by automatically by the mechanism inside the drive.
As the discs are flexible and the optical system requires it to be rigid so that the laser can remain focus on the disc surface. To get around this problem Hitachi fixed a 0.6 mm thick piece of glass through which air is withdrawn and causing the disc to be drawn against the rigid glass and making it flat.
Hitachi Maxell has finished development of the system but doesn’t yet have commercialization plans.
Via: Storageitworld
