[wumms]

Current write speed (No read speed given):

    Blu-ray (1×)            ~36   Mbit/s
    MS-Glass (single beam)  ~25.6 Mbit/s
    MS-Glass (multi-beam)   ~65.9 Mbit/s

That's ~7-18 days per 120mm x 120mm medium (4.8TB). Glass prices stable for now. Also, the authors make no statement about horizontal vs. vertical storage.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

> No read speed given

Write only medium!

[adrian_b]

The reading is the done with a high-resolution video camera and the image is processed to extract the data.

This can be easily done many times faster than the writing, which is why the article is focused on the progress that Microsoft has achieved in increasing the writing speed, in comparison with their prototypes from a few years ago. It is also easy to make separate readers that are much cheaper and smaller than the writers.

The most important limitation of this device is the current very high cost of the lasers used for writing. Had they been cheaper, the writing speed could be increased by adding more lasers.

Microsoft argues that if this kind of short-pulse lasers would be mass produced, they could become much cheaper, like it has happened with the many lasers that are used now everywhere in optical fiber communication and with optical discs.

For now. this is a chicken-and-egg problem. This kind of optical storage cannot be converted into a commercial product because the lasers are too expensive and the lasers are too expensive because there is no high-volume market for them.

Even the current level of performance would be enough for myself. If I could afford such a device, I would buy it instantly, to stop worrying about having to buy periodically new HDDs, to migrate my data from old HDDs and to buy periodically new tape drives, to migrate my data from tape formats that become obsolete.

[npodbielski]

At least it is safe for 10k years! And from everybody ever basically.

[NitpickLawyer]

Thanks for digging this up. Every "scientists create new storage medium" is always a disappointment when you get to see the write speeds. This seems decent? At least in "raw" numbers there's nothing obviously making this useless. Let's hope they have a path to quick commercialisation and make it available. If there's any DC adoption will be the real test, I think.

[po1nt]

First CDs would take hour and a half to write with a laser. Once engineers take over the tech, it will might get faster.

[stackghost]

>This seems decent?

Definitely. If it actually achieves those speeds it's perfectly reasonable for long-term/cold storage.

[thegrim33]

Write speed is probably the least important metric for people that are considering something like this. After everything with storage and longevity is taken care of, improving write speeds is a nice to have, but not the important part.