Researchers at Drexel University and University of Pennsylvania have developed a technique to store 12.2 petabytes (12 500 terabytes) per square centimetre. I would estimate that a 2.5in hard drive would have about 40 centimetres of storage space. Using the new technique I estimate that 488 petabytes (499 712 terabytes, almost half a trillion bytes) hard disk drives will become available within a few years.

I have also put that theory to an iPod, say an iPod’s hard disk has 4 centimetres squared space that is 50 petabytes (51 200 terabytes). If each song is 5 megabytes you could store about 11 billion songs on it. I think iTunes might need to stoke up a bit.

If I said that the average movie on a DVD was about 4 gigabytes you could have 127 926 272 full length movies with extras. If I then said that each of those movies was 100 minuets long that would take you over 243 centuries (24 339 years) to watch them all end to end. That hard disk can also store 20 468 204 single layer Blu-Ray disks, which is 3 894 years of HD video.

If you look at it like that it does put the battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks totally pointless. Come to think of it, HD will also be pointless, the amount of storage would mean that you could have footage could be recorded in lossless formats.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 12th, 2006 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.