A DVD That Can Store 50TB of Data?

Indian-born scientist developing coated DVD’s that can make hard disks obsolete

An Indian born scientist in the US is working on developing DVD’s which can be coated with a light -sensitive protein and can store up to 50 terabytes (about 50,000 gigabytes) of data.

Professor V Renugopalakrishnan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston has claimed to have developed a layer of protein made from tiny genetically altered microbe proteins which could store enough data to make computer hard disks almost obsolete.

“What this will do eventually is eliminate the need for hard drive memory completely,” ABC quoted Prof. Renugopalakrishnan, a BSc in Chemistry from Madras University and PhD in biophysics from Columbia/State University of New York, Buffalo, New York as saying.

The light-activated protein is found in the membrane of a salt marsh microbe Halobacterium salinarum and is also known as bacteriorhodopsin (bR). It captures and stores sunlight to convert it to chemical energy. When light shines on bR, it is converted to a series of intermediate molecules each with a unique shape and colour before returning to its ‘ground state’.





  1. cjules13

    Dude I need that.

    Reply · Jul. 12 2006 at 6:32 am
  2. soulxtc

    ROTFL……….that’s F’d up….

    Reply · Jul. 11 2006 at 10:32 pm
  3. DwarfBaby

    Wow that’s almost enough storage to store the binary format of his last name.

    Reply · Jul. 11 2006 at 7:18 pm
  4. Ne007

    I’ll comment on this one when I have it in my possession.

    Reply · Jul. 11 2006 at 5:30 pm
  5. mountain_rage

    Theres that as well as holographic memory for very large storage. Holographic memory is already out for a high price and can store 300gig and should increase over time to as high as 10 terrabytes I believe. Blue ray and hd-dvd is already outdated im not sure why they are bothering.

    Reply · Jul. 11 2006 at 5:05 pm

advanced options







VyprVPN Personal VPN lets you browse securely