Could nanotechnology be used for making a high capacity CD?

Question

or even smaller cd's

Answer 1

nano tech can be used to create cds with more layers and grooves, but storing or retrieving data from moving molecules would be hard, impossible, and inefficient

Answer 2

nanotecnology is a wide area and I am not sure what you mean by a high quality CD. I mean there already exist DVDs which store more than CDs. And with Blu-ray and HD-DVD are supposed to store way more than DVDs as well!
And there do exist smaller sized CDs (they are much smaller discettes), but since they essentially run on the same CD Drive as an existing CD, there is not much of a difference, except in storage space!
I wish I understood this question better!

Answer 3

Possibly, but if I recall correctly, once blu-ray and HD-DVD get burners onto the market, they are supposed to allow up to 50GB of space on one disc (I don't remember which). And while discs are good for write once, read many (such as backups), larger flash drives may be a better solution. They can be rewritten and are smaller than discs.

New compact flash drives (up to 8GB easily available, probably bigger in testing, even some secure digital which are even smaller are available up to 8GB) are physically smaller than DVDs, but can hold almost as much as a dual layer DVD (about 9.7GB). Once the price of the flash drives comes down, they might be the better alternative than discs, especially since they aren't vulnerable to scratches.

Answer 4

It's possible, but I'd be leery of using a laser with the precise tolerances that would be needed for a nanotech CD. A far better application of nanotech would be in upgrading flash drives.

Answer 5

It would be better as a flash drive lol