History of optical storage media

CD-ROM, introduced in 1982 CD-R and CD-RW in 1988 DVD was rolled out in 1996 DVD-R in late 1997 DVD+R in 2002

As of 2007, future development beyond HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc appear to be based upon one or more of the following technologies, all in varying stages of development: Holographic data storage. 3D optical data storage. Nearfield optics. Solid immersion optics Discs utilizing very short wavelengths such as UV or X-rays. Layer selection discs (LS-R). Multi-level technology. Complex pit shapes allowing multiple channels to be stored on one track. Wavelength multiplexing techniques.

Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA)

An international trade association which promotes the use of recordable optical technologies and products

RNA might be the oldest data storage medium , now replaced by DNA in most organisms.

Optical disc recording technologies and modes

Overburning> Buffer underrun protection> Packet writing> CD Disc-At-Once> CD Track-At-Once> DVD-R Disc At Once> Session At Once>

The optical lens of a CD drive.

Optical disc
flat, circular, usually polycarbonate disc
data is stored in the form of pits (or bumps) within a flat surface, usually along a single spiral groove that covers the entire recorded surface of the disc

 data is generally accessed when a special material on the disc (often aluminium) is illuminated with a laser diode

pits distort the reflected laser light

OPTICAL MEDIA TYPES

Laser disc> CD>
5.1 Music disc SACD Photo CD CD-R> CD-ROM CD-RW>

Video CD SVCD CD+G CD-Text CD ROM XA CD-Extra CD-i Bridge CD-i

 Mini Disc> DVD>

DVD-R DVD+R DVD-R DL DVD+R DL DVD-RW DVD+RW DVD-RW DL DVD+RW DL DVD-RAM DVD-D>

 HD DVD>
HD DVD-R HD DVD-RW HD DVD-RAM

Blue Ray Disc (BD)>

BD-R BD-RE

UDO> UMD>

3D optical data storage

Any form of optical data storage in which information can be recorded and/or read with three dimensional resolution

 potential to provide terabyte-level mass storage on DVD-sized disks data recording and readback are achieved by focusing lasers within the medium because of the volumetric nature of the data structure, the laser light must travel through other data points before it reaches the point where reading or recording is desired nonlinearity is required to ensure that these other data points do not interfere with the addressing of the desired point

 In order to record information on the disc a laser is brought to a focus at a particular depth in the media that corresponds to a particular information layer When the laser is turned on it causes a photochemical change in the media As the disc spins and the read/write head moves along a radius, the layer is written just as a DVD-R is written The depth of the focus may then be changed and another entirely different layer of information written

 The distance between layers may be 5 to 100 micrometers, allowing >100 layers of information to be stored on a single disc

 In order to read the data back, a similar procedure is used, except this time instead of causing a photochemical change in the media the laser causes flourescence This is achieved by using a lower laser power or a different laser wavelength The intensity or wavelength of the fluorescence is different depending on whether the media has been written at that point, and so by measuring the emitted light the data is read

As the disc spins, it moves the laser beam along the track

Schematic representation of a cross-section through a 3D optical storage disc (yellow) along a data track (orange marks). Four data layers are seen, with the laser currently addressing the third from the top. The laser passes through the first two layers and only interacts with the third, since here the light is at a high intensity

Examples of 3D optical data storage media Written Call/Recall media

Mempile media

FMD

D-Data DMD and drive

Landauer media

Microholas media in action

Holographic storage
stores information optically inside crystals or photopolymers non-volatile, sequential access either write once or read/write storage

Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD)

an optical disc technology which would hold up to 3.9 terabytes (TB) of information
approximately 5,500 times the capacity of a CD-ROM 830 times the capacity of a DVD 160 times the capacity of single-layer Blue-ray discs about 4 times the capacity of the largest computer hard drives as of 2007

employs a technique known as collinear holography

Collinear Holography
Two lasers, one red and one green, are collimated in a single beam The green laser reads data encoded as laser interference fringes from a holographic layer near the top of the disc while the red laser is used as the reference beam and to read servo information from a regular CD-style aluminium layer near the bottom A dichroic mirror layer between the holographic data and the servo data reflects the green laser while letting the red laser pass through

Picture of an HVD

3-D Holography Breakthrough: Erase And Rewrite In Minutes

Science Daily (Feb. 6, 2008) University of Arizona optical scientists have broken a technological barrier by making threedimensional holographic displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes.

Views of an automobile (top) and of a human brain (bottom) from the updatable 3-D holographic display developed at The University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences in collaboration with Nitto Denko Technical Corp., Oceanside, Calif. The 3-D images were recorded on a 4-inch by 4-inch photorefractive polymer device

OPEN TO DISCUSSION

 Overburning is the process of recording data past the normal size limit Many disc manufacturers extend a recordable disc to leave a small margin of extra groove at the outer edge This lead-out was originally intended to provide tolerance for the read head of an audio CD player should it overseek, by providing a padding of up to 90 seconds of silent digital audio >

 A buffer underrun occurs during recording if the recorder runs out of data in the recording buffer Once the laser is on, it cannot stop and resume flawlessly; thus the pause necessitated by the underrun can cause the data on the disc to become invalid With buffer underrun protection, the laser is able to stop writing for any amount of time and resume when the buffer is full again. The gap between successive writes is extremely small >

 Packet writing is a technology that allows optical discs to be used in a similar manner to a floppy disc Packet writing can be used both with oncewriteable media and rewriteable media >

 Disc-At-Once or DAO for CD-R media is a mode that masters the disc contents in one pass, rather than a track at a time as in Track At Once DAO mode, unlike TAO mode, allows any amount of audio data (or no data at all) to be written in the "pre-gaps" between tracks>

 Track-At-Once or TAO is a recording mode where the recording laser stops after each track is finished and two run-out blocks are written One link block and four run-in blocks are written when the next track is recorded>

 Disc At Once recording for DVD-R media is a mode in which all data is written sequentially to the disc in one uninterrupted recording session The on-disk contents result in a lead-in area, followed by the data, and closed by a leadout area >

 Session at Once recording allows multiple sessions to be recorded and finalized on a single disc The resulting disc can be read by computer drives, but sessions after the first are generally not readable by CD Audio equipment >

 Laserdisc (LD) was the first commercial optical disc storage medium, and was used primarily for movies for home viewing

The standard home video laserdisc is 30 cm (11.81 inches) in diameter and made up of two single-sided aluminum discs layered in plastic and bonded with glue

Laserdisc (left) compared to a DVD/CD (right) >

 A Compact Disc (CD) is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio The technology was later adapted and expanded to include data storage (CDROM), write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), SACD, VCD, SVCD, PhotoCD, PictureCD, CD-i, and Enhanced CD. CD-ROMs and CD-Rs remain widely used technologies in the computer industry

 A Compact Disc is made from a 1.2 mm thick disc of almost pure polycarbonate plastic and weighs approximately 16 grams. A thin layer of aluminium or, more rarely, gold is applied to the surface to make it reflective, and is protected by a film of lacquer
Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold up to 80 minutes of audio

The pits in a CD are 500 nm wide, between 830 nm and 3,000 nm long and 150 nm deep.

 The spacing between the tracks, the pitch, is 1.6 m A CD is read by focusing a 780 nm wavelength semiconducter laser through the bottom of the polycarbonate layer The pits and lands themselves do not directly represent the zeros and ones of binary data. Instead, Non-return-to-zero, inverted (NRZI) encoding is used: a change from pit to land or land to pit indicates a one, while no change indicates a zero

Physical size

Audio Capacity

CD-ROM Data Capacity

12 cm (standard) 7480 min

650703 MB

8 cm (mini-CD)

2124 min

185210 MB

"Business card"

~6 min

~55 MB

 Double layer (DL) media have two independent data layers separated by a semi-reflective layer Both layers are accessible from the same side, but require the optics to change the laser's focus

 Traditional single layer (SL) writable media are produced with a spiral groove molded in the protective polycarbonate layer (not in the data recording layer), to lead and synchronize the speed of recording head Double-layered writable media have: a first polycarbonate layer with a (shallow) groove, a first data layer, a semi-reflective layer, a second (spacer) polycarbonate layer with another (deep) groove, and a second data layer The first groove spiral usually starts on the inner edge and extends outerwards, while the second groove starts on the outer edge and extends inwards >

CD-R (Compact Disc-Recordable)

The polycarbonate disc contains a spiral groove, called the "pregroove" (because it is molded in before data is written to the disc), to guide the laser beam upon writing and reading information. The pregroove is molded into the top side of the polycarbonate disc, where the pits and lands would be molded if it were a pressed CD; the bottom side, which faces the laser beam in the player or drive, is flat and smooth

 The polycarbonate disc is coated on the pregroove side with a very thin layer of organic dye On top of the dye is coated a thin, reflecting layer of silver, a silver alloy, or gold Finally, a protective coating of a photopolymerizable lacquer is applied on top of the metal reflector and cured with UV-light A blank CD-R is not "empty"; the pregroove has a wobble, which helps the writing laser to stay on track and to write the data to the disc at a constant rate>

Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW)

While a prerecorded CD has its information permanently written onto its polycarbonate surface, a CD-RW disc contains a phase-change alloy recording layer composed of a phase change material, most often AgInSbTe, an alloy of silver, indium,antimony and tellurium An infra-red laser beam is used to selectively heat and melt, at 400 degrees (Celsius), the crystallized recording layer into an amorphous state or to anneal it at a lower temperature back to its crystalline state>

 A MiniDisc (MD) is a magneto-optical disc-based data storage device The disc is permanently housed in a cartridge (68 72 5 mm) with a sliding door, similar to the casing of 90 mm floppy disc the disc is a random-access medium At the beginning of the disc there is a table of contents (TOC, also known as "System File" area of the disc)

Anti-skip
MiniDisc has a feature that prevents disc skipping under all but the most extreme conditions. Older CD players had once been a source of annoyance to users as they were prone to mistracking from vibration and shock. MiniDisc solved this problem by reading the data into a memory buffer at a higher speed than was required before being read out to the digital-toanalog converter at the standard rate required by the format. The size of the buffer varies by model.

A Mini-CD is 8 centimeters in diameter >

DVD ("Digital Versatile Disc" or "Digital Video Disc"

DVD uses 650 nm wavelength laser diode light as opposed to 780 nm for CD. This permits a smaller spot on the media surface (1.32 m for DVD versus 2.11 m for CD) A DVD disk has several layers, which are made of plastic. All layers have a thickness of 1.2 mm. An injection used on a polycarbonate plastic (this plastic can resist very high and low temperatures) leads to the creation of microscopic bumps.>

DVD-D
DVD-D is a self-destructing disposable DVD format It is sold in a cardboard sleeve, and begins to destroy itself after several hours DVD-D now exists as one time play only for movies, limited time play for video games, and recordable DVD-D>

HD DVD / Blu-ray disc comparison

Currently, Blu-ray discs have a higher storage capacity than HD DVD discs (50 GB vs. 30 GB) Although HD DVD standard allows for an as-yet unused triple-layer 51 GB disc >

Blu-ray Disc (BD)

High-density optical format for the storage of digital information, including high-definition video The name Blu-ray Disc is derived from the blueviolet laser used to read and write this type of disc Because of its shorter wavelength (405 nm), substantially more data can be stored on a Blu-ray Disc than on the DVD format, which uses a red (650 nm) laser and CD (780nm) A Blu-ray Disc can store 50 GB, almost six times the capacity of a DVD.

Front side of an experimental Blu-ray Disc>

Ultra Density Optical

An Ultra Density Optical disc or UDO is a 5.25" ISO cartridge optical disc which can store up to 60 GB of data Utilises a design based on a Magnetooptical disc, but using PhaseChange technology combined with a blue violet laser

Universal Media Disc (UMD)

developed by Sony for use on the PlayStation Portable can hold up to 1.8 gigabytes of data Dimensions: approx. 65 mm (W) 64 mm (D) 4.2 mm (H) Maximum capacity: 1.80 GB (dual layer), 900 MB (single-layer) Laser wavelength: 660 nm (red laser)>