Hitatchi-LG unveils 1TB Blu-ray cartridge prototype

Earlier this year, the Blu-ray Disc Association finalized the BDXL specification that allowed manufacturers to begin producing and selling discs with capacities of up to 128GB. Now, LG-Hitachi Data Storage has found a way to combine multiple BDXL discs to create a 1TB data backup cartridge that is being used in a prototype archive system.

LG-Hitatchi unveiled the hardware this week at the Ceatec electronics show in Japan.

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The system looks and acts like a network-attached storage device. It contains four HDD bays which support replication, and two additional slots which house the cartridges.

Up to eight BDXL Blu-ray discs can be used in each cartridge. A full cartridge containing 128GB write-once discs would equate to a terabyte of extra storage. The system is designed to transfer seldom-used data from the hard drives to the Blu-ray discs for archiving.

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A very cool feature of these cartridges is the addition of an RFID chip that can be read by a handheld scanning device to show users what is contained on each disc. That functionality would make file retrieval from the archives a snap.

Who needs such a system? As video technology advances, possibly into the UHDTV format within the next decade, high capacity data storage is going to be increasing in demand.

There is no indication as to what the price for such a system might be, but LG-Hitachi has stated that they intend to have the device on the market sometime next year.

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While something like this probably isn’t necessary or affordable to the average consumer, it’s an innovative use of Blu-ray technology that may be a better enterprise storage solution than what is available today.

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