Mobility Watch

If you don’t know what a terabyte is, you might want to know that it is 1000 Gigabytes. Most computers average about a 120 GB hard drive space, which is the space that you use whenever you save a file to your computer.

Right now, I’m sitting on a 350 GB hard drive, and I have another external 100 GB hard drive for my reckless use.

Before I tell you about this disc with 3 Terabytes, I need to help you put it into perspective of everyday real life use.

A Dual-Layered DVD has approximately 8.5 GB, this in comparative to a regular DVD holds twice as much. A regular DVD-ROM contains nearly 4.7 GB. A regular compact disc contains 700 MB, that is almost 1/5 of a DVD-ROM.

I dont want to forget the other types of DVD’s out there right now. First of all there is the HD DVD, which holds up to 15 GB(Single layer) and 30GB(Dual Layer) and 51 GB(Triple Layer) If you count up the space on these discs, you will almost get 3/4 of the average hard drive on a computer.

As sad as it is, there is another format that rivals HD DVD called Blu-Ray High Definition. Such a disc can hold 25 GB (Single layer) and 50 GB (Dual Layer.) Which ever one you pick for your movie convenience is up to you, but as of now, it looks like Blu-Ray is going to make more money that HD DVD.

Anyways, back to this compact disc that may be able to hold 3 terabytes. This disc will be able to blow everything that we currently have out of the water.

How the disc works is dependent on the type of laser used to inscribe the disc. A regular disc uses 780 nanometer wavelength, whereas a dvd uses 650 nm, and HD DVD and Blu-Ray both use 405 nanometer.

The future disc will be able to use a 40 nanometer wavelength, thus the memory capacity of 3 Terabytes. Obviously, such technology is not out just yet, but when it is, it will be in your hands for your mobile use everyday. (estimate time: LONG LONG TIME)

Anyways, now that you know how these things work, and what is up for our future, you can keep a lookout for it. But by then, you can see how a match catches on fire with a everyday laser.