# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**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 18, 2002, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/21 "2002-07-18T04:48:52Z")
You know, I was indeed thinking of putting a porn reference in the OP but then I thought: I bet some guy (or girl) will come with: “Porn! Lots of it!” Before three posts were out. :sigh: We are so predictable! 😃 As I see it, this looks like the first generation of holographic media. It looks to me that enhancements in this technology will soon get even more data in those disks. Didn’t IBM promise a holographic storage device in 5 years? Those Japanese disks are going to be available next year. Time to catch up!! Think of all that porn that needs to be saved for posterity! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Netbrian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71e660/32.png) [@Netbrian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Netbrian)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/22 "2002-07-18T06:54:15Z")
I’d go for music, and old games. And any random PDFs I can find on the internet. I love archiving stuff for no apparent reason. ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/23 "2002-07-18T06:54:22Z")
How much would this terabyte drive go for on the open market? I’ll wait about 2 years. Knowing how technology progresses, it will probably cost me $5 at a garage sale by then, because everyone will be wanting to buy the YOTTABYTE drives. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Blalron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/35a633/32.png) [@Blalron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blalron)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/24 "2002-07-18T06:57:12Z")
Serious answer to what I would store on a terabyte: The American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies. That would take about 400 gigs, give or take. Then I’d divide the remaining 600 gigs equally between pornography (300 gigs) and mp3s (another 300 gigs). ---
**Author:** ![Karellen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/779978/32.png) [@Karellen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karellen)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/25 "2002-07-18T07:23:54Z")
I think we need to think more creatively here, folks. A terabyte is a thousand gigs. The answer is not “porn”. The answer is: **the next generation of porn.** Think about it. We’ve moved from jpegs to mpegs to avis and such, but how long will it be before we get 3-D holographic projections? As always, the new media technology will be driven by porn. And when it debuts, we will need terabyte disks to store the massive data quantities involved in realistically depicting our craven fantasies. Surely a 5-minute 3-D movie of “supersexxxy blonde cutie getting ass-banged by 4 hung studz” will take up 30 gigs or so. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/26 "2002-07-18T13:59:35Z")
I’d go for the entire Library of Congress on disk. ---
**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 18, 2002, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/27 "2002-07-18T14:31:34Z")
Has anyone ever calculated approximately how much space the Library Of Congress would require in digital format? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/28 "2002-07-18T14:33:09Z")
I’d finally get around to installing Windows XP. ---
**Author:** ![bleach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bleach/32/3106_2.png) [@bleach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bleach)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2002, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/29 "2002-07-18T18:10:18Z")
**Revtim** , the estimates for the size of the LOC are all over the board. Here is a sample: 8 Tb: [http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/clusters/news/2002/crm.html](http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/clusters/news/2002/crm.html) 10 Tb: [http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~roy/dataquan/](http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/~roy/dataquan/) 20 Tb: [http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb1019-3.htm](http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb1019-3.htm) 20 Tb: [http://www.boulderinstruments.com/products.htm](http://www.boulderinstruments.com/products.htm) [incidentally boasts that their product can back up the LOC in under 30 hours] **Neidhart** , you’d better get a pack of 20 disks to be safe. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2002, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/30 "2002-07-19T02:21:02Z")
yeah, boy! Now if they’d just get rid of that pesky copyright problem, we could get rolling! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2002, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371/31 "2002-07-19T15:24:58Z")
If you use firewire HDs you can stack a lot of them to get a few tetrabytes of space. or so I read. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-with-a-terabyte-of-space-new-holographic-disk/119371.md?page=1)