"Nano-light" Technology Promises 800GB+ DVDs (moved from ATSNN), page 1

Data storage and software company, Iomega, has applied for a patent which describes a disc that would be able to hold 40 to 100 times the current maximum capacity of DVDs, meaning the discs would hold close to a terrabyte, far exceeding the data storage capability of most modern hard drives.

www.newscientist.com
The next generation of DVDs can hold almost 10 times as much data, using light with a shorter wavelength to read even smaller surface features. Two standards that use this principle are currently vying for market adoption - HD-DVD, created by Toshiba, NEC and Sanyo, and Blu-Ray Disc, from Sony.

However, Iomega's proposed technology, dubbed Articulated Optical Digital Versatile Disc (AO-DVD), could boost disc capacity further still. Sub-wavelength surface bumps on an AO-DVD would slope at slightly different angles - this could be used to encode up to 100 times more information.

The angles would be detected by analysing light after it had bounced off several ridges - calculating which combination of slopes would have produced the result.

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I don't understand a lot about the intricacies of computer hardware technology, but it's a wonder with the advent of re-writable disc technology that it is not being developed as a replacement for traditional hard drives, which have been somewhat sluggish in data storage advances by comparison.