An ultra-high density optical storage system includes an array of nanometer-scale emitter tips which are associated with corresponding storage surfaces. The tips are optically selectively activated to produce data features simultaneously on their corresponding storage surfaces, with the resulting data features having diameters approximately the same as the diameters of the emitter tips. The array is scannable to selected locations, whereby a data set can be stored in parallel at each location. Because of the small size of the data features, the locations of adjacent features can be spaced apart by a distance on the order of 10 nm for ultradense storage.Stored data can be selectively read out optically by positioning the emitter tip array at the location of the data set to be read and directing light onto the storage surfaces for each tip. Light reflected from the surfaces will correspond to the presence or absence of a data feature at each tip for parallel readout. Alternatively, each storage surface may be a part of a corresponding light emitter activated by the presence or absence of a feature.