this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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The storage plates probably won't cost much, but the capabilities it uses to write to those plates looks extremely expensive and won't be fitting into your computer tower any time soon.
"Any time soon" is the thing. Look at the history of hard disk drives. To store 3.75MB in 1957 on a hard disk, a single hard disk was the size of two refrigerators. By the 1980s they were 8 inches (~20cm) big stored 10 MB. Nowadays they are 3.5 inches (~9 cm) big and can store multiple TB.
Technology has accelerated considerably. Even if it takes 20 years, it might still be quicker than the hard disk to home timeline.
Yes, but there's different problems at hand now. 60 years ago the entire driving force in computers consisted of making things smaller. A hard drive 50 years ago worked like a hard drive from 20 years ago. Just shrunk. Same for processors.
Well now we're running out of room to shrink. We had to change hard drives completely. Processors started going multi core, and in the case of these ceramic drives: lasers can't get much smaller and stay powerful enough to write, and magnifying lenses also can't keep shrinking.
Aside from that, this tech is all physical, which means noise, and no one wants to go back to hearing noisy hard drives again. Lol