Re: filmscanners: Digital Shortcomings

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

RogerMillerPhoto@aol.com wrote:


> In a related note, I read in one of my electronic trade publications ( 
> E. E.
> Times) that a company has develop a chip to work with ultraviolet lasers.  
> The article stated that the UV lasers could be used in CD writers to write
> the data more densely and that such a technology could store on a single CD
> what it now takes 100 CDs to store.  I view that as a mixed blessing
> (assuming it every becomes a reality).  A CD that becomes unreadable after
> few years would now cause the loss of 100 times as many photos as would be
> lost of a CD using current technology.  Of course, you could always make 
> many
> backup copies since you'd only need one percent as many CDs.  But unless 
> they
> can speed up the write process, imagine how long it would take to write 
> a CD
> that holds 100 times the info that our current CDs hold.

Every time the density of storage media increases, this issue is (and 
probably needs to be) revisited.  I figure, with each doubling of 
storage density, there should be a doubling of reliability and 
permanence, since we are at least doubling our confidence in the product 
with the amount of material going onto it.

I do believe optical is better than magnetic, and if kept relatively 
safe of optical damage (from UV, intense lighting, etc), if the media is 
quality, it might even last a few dozen years...  However, coming up 
with multiple formats for the same media almost always creates all sorts 
of confusion.

Art