The firm Folio Photonics has announced a new storage method that uses optical drives (disks) that has great potential, since in theory it would allow the creation of higher capacity hard drives at a much lower cost than current models. According to the company, we are talking about such a significant cost reduction that it would be possible lower the price per terabyte (TB) to just $5, and in the future it could be reduced to one dollar. For comparison purposes, the current cost per terabyte is 25 dollars, five times more.
Behind this discovery that could turn the hard drive sector upside down we have an important key, and that is that these new units would have cdynamic multi-layer read and write capabilitieswhich until now had not been considered interesting for the business sector due to their low profitability.
Folio Photonics has made it profitable using proprietary polymer extrusion technology, film-based disc construction processes, custom optical pickup units, an easily scalable polymer co-extrusion process, and “next-generation materials,” a topic on which the company has not wanted to go deeper.
Today, hard drives have up to three optical layers per face and disk. Well, Folio Photonics has been able to achieve a density of 16 layers per side and disc, quite an achievement that, however, will not stop there, since the company has confirmed that it plans to continue increasing the number of layers. It has also ensured that these new hard drives are more efficient than traditional ones, more resistant to electromagnetic pulses and that they will contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of digital storage.
The first commercial drives based on this innovative technology could hit the market in 2024, and would be available in 10-drive configurations with a total capacity of 1TB per drive. If everything we have said is true, this storage unit would have a total capacity of 10 TB, and a cost of 5 dollars for each terabyte, which is equivalent to a final price of 50 dollars. Yes, we already know that it sounds too good to be true.
If the Folio Photonics technology manages to take off and really is as good as they say could revolutionize the hard drive marketso much so that it would end up rendering “obsolete” the current models of other manufacturers, which sell HDD units with capacities of 10 TB at a price around between 240 and 400 eurosdepending on the exact model and its features.
