All of your genealogical files on one DVD

DVD technology is moving so rapidly that last month General Electric that its holographic data storage program demonstrated putting up to 500 GB of storage on one CD sized disk. I you were to see the mountain of genealogically related paper and documents piled around my house, you would be interested in almost any storage capability that could make all that paper vanish. I know it is an impossible dream, but that doesn't keep me from following every increase in storage capacity.

The latest development is from the Australian Swinburne University of Technology, where researchers have gone way past GE by cramming up to 10 Terabytes of information storage on one disk. The GE system could store 100 movies on one DVD, the Swinburne technology would push that storage capacity to 2,000. Even the GE technology would cut down on the number of disks it would take to back up my system and be much more than most people would need, but the newer technology promises to have your entire life on one disk.

One major drawback is the recording time all this information might take. Right now recording a full DVD takes a long time and multiple DVDs can take an entire day. It would take me weeks to record 100 DVDs worth of information at today's speed.

But it certainly looks like increased storage capacity is in the future.