New Protein-Based Storage Technology Will Someday Boost DVD Capacity to 50TB

By Alice Hill
RealTechNews

Further proof the Blu-ray and other DVD technologies are just a quick stop on the road to even higher density DVD storage, an Indian scientist today announced a breakthrough that could someday boost DVD storage to a whopping 50 terabytes and make the hard drive obsolete. By coating the disc surface with a light sensitive protein, the capacity boost from the small genetically altered microbe proteins could eventually make a disc surface capable of holding 50,000 gigabytes

Professor V Renugopalakrishnan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston has claimed to have developed a layer of protein made from tiny genetically altered microbe proteins which could store enough data to make computer hard disks almost obsolete. “What this will do eventually is eliminate the need for hard drive memory completely,” ABC quoted Prof. Renugopalakrishnan, a BSc in Chemistry from Madras University and PhD in biophysics from Columbia/State University of New York, Buffalo, New York as saying.

The new protein-based DVD will have advantages over current optical storage devices such as the Blue-ray as well, because the information is stored in proteins that are only a few nanometres across. “The protein-based DVDs will be able to store at least 20 times more than the Blue-ray and eventually even up to 50,000 gigabytes (about 50 terabytes) of information. You can pack literally thousands and thousands of those proteins on a media like a DVD, a CD or a film or whatever,” he said. Source: Yahoo News

We Say: Only downside I see is the inevitable ultra-extended director’s cut. King Kong was just not long enough! And what on earth would a single disc cost? $1,000? not to mention the player. Sounds interesting, but don’t hold your breath on seeing this anytime soon.