Following the links from Slashdot will bring you to some rather interesting research being done on Optical Beam Lithography which has created a possible improvement to DVD storage.  Researchers have developed a new technique and a new resin capable of storage densities much higher than current optical media.  A 3D optical beam with a 9nm feature size and 52nm two-line resolution is used to create the light sensitive features that allow optical media to store data.  If this is developed into a product that will be both inexpensive and robust we could see optical media with storage of up to 1TB.  You are going to need a faster way to write to it than what currently exists if you don't want to wait a very long time for that write to finish though.

"Using a two-light-beam method a company claims to have overcome Abbe's Law to dramatically increase the storage density for optical media, to the 9 nm scale. From the article: 'The technique is also cost-effective and portable, as only conventional optical and laser elements are used, and allows for the development of optical data storage with long life and low energy consumption, which could be an ideal platform for a Big Data centre.'"

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