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A small startup plans to store data at just 10 cents per terabyte (TB) by 2030, potentially disrupting the entire data storage industry.
Optera Data, founded by entrepreneur Geoff Macleod-Smith, uses special light-emitting nanoparticles to pack information onto optical discs. The technology could store 10 terabytes of data on a single disc for just $1, making it 25 times cheaper than current tape storage systems.
The breakthrough comes from Dr. Nicolas Riesen’s lab at the University of South Australia. His team discovered how to encode multiple bits of data by creating “spectral holes” – areas where nanoparticles change their light emission when hit by precise laser beams.
The team published their findings in ACS Photonics in 2021 in a paper titled “Data Storage in a Nanocrystalline Mixture Using Room Temperature Frequency-Selective and Multilevel Spectral Hole-Burning.”
Current storage technologies struggle to keep up with data growth. Hard drive prices hover around $11.50 per terabyte, while tape storage costs about $5 per terabyte. Both are expected to drop to around $2.50-$4 per TB by 2029.
The company aims to manufacture 1TB discs in the short term, with the ambitious goal of hitting 10TB for $1 by the end of the decade.
Company advisor Tom Coughlin has written a white paper available on its website. “A thin film single layer write-once, archival disc with high volume manufacturing costs of $1/10TB ($0.10/TB) is possible before the end of the decade,” he wrote.
The technology offers several advantages over traditional storage. It provides Write Once, Read Many (WORM) security for sensitive data. The discs can preserve information for decades. They also work with existing optical drives after some modifications.
The system also saves power. Unlike hard drives that need constant electricity, these discs only use energy during reading and writing. This feature makes them perfect for data centers struggling with high energy bills from powering artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Optera Data faces competition from other new storage technologies. Cerabyte uses ceramic-coated glass sheets, while Folio Photonics develops multilayer optical discs. Both aim for $1-2 per TB by 2030, still higher than Optera Data’s target.
According to Coughlin’s white paper, overall storage capacity shipments will grow five-fold between 2024 and 2029, with much of this data residing in secondary or archival storage. This growth, combined with increasing pressure on data centers to reduce energy consumption, could create an opening for new storage technologies like Optera Data’s system.
