Australian Start-Up TOMdisc Unveils Optical Storage Techniques Storing Up to 10TB by Disc

Industry sees the light to help solve growing storage needs.

Australia start-up IT optical media company TOMdisc (Terabyte Optical Media disc) is working with the University of South Australia (UniSA) to develop new storage solutions amid a massive global increase in Internet use and cloud computing.

Using high-capacity optical storage techniques that can store up to 10TB of data per disc readable by adapted Blu-ray drives ^(*), the partners hope to meet the needs of heavy data users in workplaces.

UniSA lead researcher Dr. Nick Riesen says traditional storage technologies such as HDD drives and SSDs are failing to meet the growth in data demand.

“Worldwide, data is being generated three times faster than can be stored, and while new optical platforms are being developed, they are limited to write-once memory,” he says.

The multi-terabyte optical discs being developed by TOMdisc and UniSA are a simple, cheap and secure solution for heavy data users, according to Mark Christie, director of technology, TOMdisc.

This technology being developed by the company in partnership with UniSA and in conjunction with a technology and trademark license between the firm and HP Inc. relies on phosphor films in which multiple holes or bits can be written into the fluorescence spectrum.

“These spectral holes are predicted to store multiple encoding levels to allow for up to hundreds of bits of storage per pixel,” says Christie.

The company also partners with the Singapore based Digistore Solutions Holdings Pte Ltd. (DSSH) which markets an optical library that uses high capacity discs to provide low cost long term data retention solutions for SMB’s.

“DSSH is very excited to be partnering with TOMdisc because the longevity and competitiveness of our industry relies on the future availability of low cost high capacity optical media “, said Geoff MacLeod-Smith, CEO.

^(*) Optical storage is based on nanocrystals with light-emitting properties that can be efficiently switched on and off in patterns that represent digital information. Lasers are used to alter the electronic states and therefore the fluorescence properties of the crystals.