Technology is pretty amazing. What makes it more amazing is that just when you think a particular idea has been taken to the nth degree and couldn’t go much further, another boffin comes along and shows that there is more that can be done!

This glass CD is a prime example. CD/DVD technology is now run of the mill. HD DVD and Blu-Ray are currently battling it out for supremecy. Where do you think the secondary storage technology will end up?

Even though this tech is tres cool, I personally feel that it’s getting to the point where removable media is already big enough for day to day needs. As a home user, a 4.7 GB disc is definitely big enough to do personal back-ups of data. Heck, if anything, it’s a back-up deterrant because you’re constantly waiting for more data to stick on the disc before burning it!

As a corporate user, tape back-ups are really the only way to go. Other than games and movies, right now I can’t see a huge need for anything bigger than a dual-layer DVD. When you end up with a disc being able to hold so much data you then have the added issue of being able to read that data off that disc fast enough to make it usable. It’s all well and good having huge amounts of data on these monsterous discs, but when it takes an ice-age to get access to it, all of a sudden the tech doesn’t seem so great.

I’d like to see some more advances in disc read speeds (both optical and magnetic areas), then at least the increase in volume on the media can be utilised to its full. The hard drive and the CD/DVD drive are the slowest bits in my machine - and I can’t wait for them to catch up with the other bits!