Terabyte Disk Drive

The data storage requirements for many DOD and commercial applications are rapidly surpassing the current technology in disk storage capabilities. For the DOD, there is a substantial increase in the amount of data coming from new and refined sensors, and many command centers are being required to go moblie, exacerbating the data storage problems. For commercial applications, multimedia applications with itnegrate voice and video are becoming widespread but are swamping current disk storage technology. What is needed is a new form of data storage disk drive that is small, inexpensive, capable of storing 100 billion to a trillion bytes or more, suitable for mobile applications, and capable of being read, written and rewrittent at a high data rate. By exploiting and extending our unique technology and capability for manufacturing and marketing ultra high density, analog optical memory chips, we propose: Phase I - provide and semonstrate by simulation, a modular engineering design concept for writing, rewriting and reading data onto/from the disk, along with fabrication details of the disk and system design; Phase II - fabricate the device designed in Phase I.