Note: Unfortunately the research paper linked in the article is a dead/broken/wrong link. Perhaps the author will update it later.
From the limited coverage, it doesn’t sound like there’s an actual optical drive that utilizes this yet and that it’s just theoretical based on the properties of the material the researchers developed.
I’m not holding my breath, but I would absolutely love to be able to back up my storage system to a single optical disc (even if tens of TBs go unused).
If they could make a R/W version of that, holy crap.
I so wish we had some affordable, high-density storage technology that we could record and then forget it in the attic for 20 years.
I mean there’s magnetic tape. It’s not, like, usable. But it’s also none too volatile if stored properly.
M-Disc exists?
100GB max per disc isn’t that high density, nor are they particularly affordable per GB.
That is just a hard drive with extra steps