Traditional disc drives (HDDs) continue to provide greater cold storage space at lower prices despite consumer PCs and gaming consoles switching to quicker SSDs.
One business claims optical disc technology can advance significantly.
This week, Folio Photonics unveiled a brand-new technique for optical disc storage that may enable hard drives to become bigger and more affordable than before.
The company claims that it can provide storage at $5 per terabyte and, eventually, $1 per terabyte using novel materials and production methods.
The finest hard drives today cost roughly $25 per terabyte, which is five times more expensive.
Dynamic multi-layer write/read capabilities, which were previously uneconomical at the corporate scale, are a feature of the latest optical discs.
Folio accomplished this using “next-generation materials,” patented polymer extrusion, film-based disc manufacturing techniques, bespoke optical pickup units, and scalable polymer co-extrusion technology.
Today’s archival discs have up to three optical layers on each side of the disc, but Folios have sixteen. The business intends to keep raising that figure.
Additionally, Folio asserts that its discs are more energy-efficient than conventional HDDs, with the expectation that adoption will reduce the carbon impact of the digital storage sector.
The new hard drives also have improved electromagnetic pulse resistance.
The new hard drives will be made available by the business starting in 2024, with 10-disc systems containing 1TB of storage on each disc and 10TB HDDs costing about $50.
At the moment, that much money could get you a 2TB HDD. Folio intends to eventually provide larger drives.
If Folio’s technique is successful, it might completely alter the current HDD market war for drives larger than twenty-four terabytes.
Western Digital and Seagate are two manufacturers vying to produce 30TB drives by the middle of this decade and 100TB drives by 2030.
These businesses, together with Toshiba, are utilizing technologies like iNAND memory, HAMR, and microwave assistance to push the storage and performance of HDDs.
2020 saw the arrival of a 20TB HDD from Seagate, and earlier this year, WD unveiled a 26TB drive.
The storage race may go along far more quickly as a result of recent multi-layer technology advancements.
To read our blog on “Western Digital Launched World’s First 12 TB & 14 TB Hard Disks,” click here.
