# What would you do with a Terabyte of space? (New holographic disk) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 17, 2002, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371 "2002-07-17T06:50:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/1 "2002-07-17T06:50:16Z")
The mind boggles. A Japanese company just announced a DVD-like holographic recordable disk that can store a terabyte of data: 2 to the 40th power (1,099,511,627,776) bytes. This is approximately 1 trillion bytes, compare that to a DVD that has a capacity of just 4 Gigabytes or 4 billion bytes: [http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/2002/0716/opt.htm](http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/pc/docs/2002/0716/opt.htm) (The page is in Japanese, but check the photos) So, what will you use it for? To save all of the SDMB, hamsters included? The save the whole season of a TV show in one disk? Or the whole run? The entire Star wars movies in one disk? In HDTV format? Including George Lucas in love? What else? ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/2 "2002-07-17T07:28:00Z")
Porn. I’ll take three of those disks, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Karellen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/779978/32.png) [@Karellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karellen)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/3 "2002-07-17T08:15:49Z")
Yep. Porn. The entire Internet’s supply, thank you. This way you could safely transfer the day’s downloads (especially after one of those multi-hour, late-night marathons) and then reformat your hard disk. ---
**Author:** ![Karellen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/779978/32.png) [@Karellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karellen)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/4 "2002-07-17T08:17:58Z")
Or at least thats what my friends would do. I would use it for salad recipes. Lots of salad recipes. ---
**Author:** ![Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weird_AL_Einstein)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 9:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/5 "2002-07-17T09:52:51Z")
I’d fill it up in about a month. Mostly with full motion video stuff, both of the mainstream variety, and also…no, not _porn_…ummmm…tasteful erotica. yes, that’s it. Mostly girl/girl…ummm, wait, no, I mean, sapphic. Sapphic themed visual erotica. That’s it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/6 "2002-07-17T10:15:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Karellen \* > \*\*Yep. Porn. The entire Internet’s supply, thank you. This way you could safely transfer the day’s downloads (especially after one of those multi-hour, late-night marathons) and then reformat your hard disk. \*\* bwahaha, the notion that you could fill the entire internets worth of porn onto 1 disk is laughable. Even Kazaa has something like 200TB online with 90% of that being porn. ---
**Author:** ![Neptune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5a626/32.png) [@Neptune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neptune)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 10:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/7 "2002-07-17T10:29:51Z")
I need a terabyte per second! Then I need some place to store all that stuff I’m receiving. ---
**Author:** ![Karellen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/779978/32.png) [@Karellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karellen)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/8 "2002-07-17T10:35:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shalmanese \* > \*\* > > bwahaha, the notion that you could fill the entire internets worth of porn onto 1 disk is laughable. Even Kazaa has something like 200TB online with 90% of that being porn. \*\* Not every kind of porn. I mean just the Internet’s supply of hot-Latina-grannies-fisting-humiliated-transvestites-on-horseback porn. Was this not obvious? 😃 But you’re right, even then I’d need two terabytes. Vive La Internet! ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/9 "2002-07-17T11:43:57Z")
Yep, porn. Lots and lots of porn. ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/10 "2002-07-17T11:57:33Z")
Ho-hum, that’s nothing. You can pick up a terabyte of data on normal hard drives for probably about $1500. Now, get back to me when they’ve got yottabytes, and then I’ll be excited. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/11 "2002-07-17T13:54:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Shalmanese \* > \*\* > > bwahaha, the notion that you could fill the entire internets worth of porn onto 1 disk is laughable. Even Kazaa has something like 200TB online with 90% of that being porn. \*\* That 200TB includes a LOT of redundant files, what with multiple people sharing the same files. I’d go so far to predict that a good 90 percent of it is non-unique. Assuming the original estimate of 200 TB is valid, that leaves 20TB of unique data. I would guess that less than 90 percent of that is porn, space-wise. There’s a lot of people sharing DVD-ripped movies, and those are typically VERY big files, 600 to 750 megabytes (so I hear…). Perhaps it’s 90 percent porn if you are basing that on amount of files, but megabyte-wise I’d say it’s well less than 50 percent, especially since there are a LOT of mp3 files being shared. Let’s say it’s 20 percent porn. If my estimates are correct, it would only take 4 Tb discs to hold all of Kazaa’s porn. If you have a discriminating taste like me, then you could easily fit all the DECENT porn (i.e., jackable) on a single disc. They better make those discs “water” resistant. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/12 "2002-07-17T15:00:16Z")
If a 20 Gb mp3 player can hold 4,000 songs, then this disk can hold 200,000. It would make one hell of a mix CD. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/13 "2002-07-17T15:08:46Z")
What would I use it for? Not much, I can only imagine how much I must spend for the equipment to write it & how long writing one would take. ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/14 "2002-07-17T15:21:57Z")
Well … sadly I generate few things that take up much space. I guess music is the only thing I could do. It would be nice to have my entire music collection on disk. Even my entire census collection only runs a few hundred MB. Of course porn goes without saying. It is simply incredible how quickly you can accumulate it off the internet for free. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/15 "2002-07-17T16:33:08Z")
At this point, you spend so much time lookign for your file it has no purpose. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/16 "2002-07-17T19:09:09Z")
Smiling bandit has a point; what good is a mix CD with 200,000 songs if I have to use a 500-page book to look up the song I want to play? “Let’s see the index… Stones, Stones… ah, he we go, page 189… cross reference… here it is, Track 87,913!” PORN, now… I figure I only need about 300 gigs for the amount of porn I need. But then I need more space for NEXT week. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/17 "2002-07-17T19:35:54Z")
It would indeed be very nice to have an entire music collection on a single disc. It would be fairly easy to organize too, just have top level subdirectories named for music types, the next level for artists, and the next level for albums. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/18 "2002-07-17T19:41:03Z")
Personally, I’d just set it to play at random. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2002, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/19 "2002-07-17T22:51:41Z")
Seriously? Get the rights to 1000’s of books, put them all in once nice Notepad and sell the “library”…what a great thing to take with you on trips to Europe, or to the DMV - whichever comes first. or Slap as many classic films (Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Third Man etc) and put it on a laptop…instant film school, and again, great for those long trips, or long waits. or porn. Of course, watching porn on a lap top at the DMV could be kinda weird. ---
**Author:** ![p\_cific\_812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@p\_cific\_812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/p_cific_812)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/20 "2002-07-18T03:38:55Z")
Here’s another vote for porn. Mmmmm, porn… 😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371.md?page=2)