If you think that current 25 - 50GB optical discs are impressive,
wait until you get a look at one of these discs with 1TB capacity. The company even says that a 5TB disc is in the works too! Oh Yeah! Eschewing the reflectivity principles in current optical media entirely, the TeraDisc system uses light-sensitive molecules called chromophores to create hologram-like matrices that can be used to store a full terabyte of data on a single disc using a red laser -- and
Mempile says that an eventual transition to a blue laser system will enable storage capacities of up to 5TB. The company is hoping to get a prototype ready in 18
months, and plans to ship the first version a year after that, priced around
$3,000 for the drive and $30-60 for a 600GB disc. No word on the price of those
1TB discs, but you can bet they won't be cheap.