Holographic storage vs. DVD in 2006 |
A Lucent spinoff company called InPhase Technologies will distribute 300 GB discs in 2006 through Hitachi Maxell using holographic storage: 
The discs, holding 300GB each, use so-called Tapestry holographic memory technology to store data by interference of light. They are also able to read and write data at 10 times the speed of a normal DVD.
This doesn’t seem to be the same holographic credit card sized storage that I heard about a year or two ago. The one where there were no moving parts and people could carry a TB of storage on a credit card. There are two beams, a reference beam and a signal beam which are flashed in a single burst of light. A motor spins the disc so all sides of the disc can be written or read.
Inphase makes available a couple videos like: Data at the Speed of Light.mov (Quicktime) which goes through how the process works and explains that holygraphic storage data has a lifecycle of 50 years compared to 7 years for traditional DVDs. The video also says “at a competitve price” which is what will truly make this format mainstream.
No idea what the actual price will be, but if it is competitive with DVDs and DVD drives, watch out. 300 GB discs are definitely enticing.
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Read something earlier today (maybe on Joystiq?) that said there’ll be 1TB disks by 2010, but that they’ll cost 100$.
On a cost/GB level that’s damned good, but it’s a bit expensive as a transfer medium (handing someone a disk worth 100$). If they came down to 25$/disk that might be worthwhile though. That said, the readers are supposed to be only about 300-500$, which is about where DVD writers were, what, 5 years ago?
That’s not bad
Comment by Jeremy Wright — November 27, 2005 @ 2:48 pm PST
I have to do some digging around, Jeremy, and see if I can find that piece that said a device that wrote 1TB on credit cards with no moving parts was coming. All those moving parts increase the failure rate on these devices plus the fact that upgrading to the faster, better storage medium comes out frequently. Imagine being able to buy a device that writes/rewrites 1 TB at a time credit sized cards and will last a lifetime with proper care because they have no moving parts. I suppose there might be another upgrade to petabyte of data in the same size, but with a petabyte, what couldn’t be saved?
Now that would be seriously disruptive.
The other part of this, which some others are already pointing out: what type of consumers need this much space? Music and video saved uncompressed uses lots of space. Digital life folks who want to keep lots of raw pictures and videos, but John Q. Public probably isn’t going to have tons of (legal) data to be saved.
2006 is really shaping up like an exciting year!
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2005 @ 3:57 pm PST
Will they be battling for a new DVD standard or will this be a proprietary form of data storage? If this type of storage will only be available through the lucent spinoff, I can’t see it gaining much traction.
Comment by Mortgage Zac — November 27, 2005 @ 4:18 pm PST
Who needs blu-ray (or hd-dvd) anyway?
As you all know there has been quite a lot of fight between two new optical disc standards, blu-ray and hd-dvd. Both have their pre’s and con’s and both have an impressive list of big companies supporting them. A short summary about both:
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Trackback by Tiemen Schut — December 2, 2005 @ 5:58 pm PST
[…] Forget abut HD-DVD and Blu-Ray for now, imagine storing your entire collection on one piece of media. This has been the promise and allure of holographic storage, but there is another storage type that could be on the horizon beyond that. […]
Pingback by Make You Go Hmm: » After holographic comes protein-based storage? — July 12, 2006 @ 12:58 pm PST
[…] Now, when we can get storage with non-movable parts, something like credit card sized holographic storage, I think the DVD format will be in real danger. In the meantime I don’t see either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD being that significant and will keep adding to our DVD collection. Sure, a year from now I might feel differently when the Blu-Ray inventory is greater but keep in mind there are still a lot of people, including families, who don’t even own an HDTV yet, much less an HDTV that supports 1080p. […]
Pingback by Got a PS3, now what? » Make You Go Hmm — December 26, 2006 @ 5:14 pm PST