Storage innovator, Iomega has just received a patent which threatens to change the face of digital media storage. Iomega will talk about its new patents at the Information Storage Industry Consortium symposium in California next month.
What it seems to have done is worked out how dots of light change their appearance when tiny nano structures are raised on the surface of a disk making it possible to store more than one bit of data for each nano change to the disk.
It was issued US patent number 6,879,556 entitled Method and Apparatus for Optical Data Storage which it says means optical disks will be able to store between 40 to 100 times more information than today’s DVDs, with data transfer rates 5 to 30 times faster.
About Fred C Thomas III
Fred Charles Thomas III - Engineer and Inventor
Fred Thomas received a BS in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Physics from Bucknell University in 1982. In 1990 he received a MS in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Control Systems and Non-linear Dynamics.
His awards include the International Design Excellence Award in 2009, Industrial Forum Product Design Award in 2008, "Nano50 Award" for "Subwavelength Optical Data Storage" in 2005, Lemelson-MIT "Inventor of the Week" Award in 2004, Iomega "Exceptional Invention Award" in 1999, and Laser Focus World "Electro-Optic Application of the Year Award" in 1994.
31 May 2005
Iomega says it can take DVDs to 100 times today’s
storage
By Peter White
Storage innovator, Iomega has just received a patent which threatens to change the face of
digital media storage. Iomega will talk about its new patents at the Information Storage
Industry Consortium symposium in California next month.
What it seems to have done is worked out how dots of light change their appearance when
tiny nano structures are raised on the surface of a disk making it possible to store more than
one bit of data for each nano change to the disk.
It was issued US patent number 6,879,556 entitled Method and Apparatus for Optical Data
Storage which it says means optical disks will be able to store between 40 to 100 times more
information than today’s DVDs, with data transfer rates 5 to 30 times faster.
It doesn’t say how long it will take for this idea to reach the market, but calls this technology
Articulated Optical DVD and points it firmly at the storage of High Definition programming.
Iomega says that it is trying to work out how best to exploit the technology commercially and
is looking for Consumer Electronics partners that might help.
One possibility that Iomega is investigating is the use of a Nano-Grating which will use
different ways of storing data such as reflectivity, polarization, phase, and reflective
orientation all multiplexed together.
‘Subwavelength optical data storage can provide an array of mechanisms by which the state
of a focused spot of light upon reflection can be precisely changed,’ explained Fred Thomas,
the Chief Technologist at Iomega.
Source: 9-27-2022 https://rethinkresearch.biz/articles/iomega-says-it-can-take-dvds-to-100-times-todays-storage/