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Holographic Storage Slated to Hit Market This Fall
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri May 18, 2007 07:34 AM
from the just-in-time-for-christmas dept.
from the just-in-time-for-christmas dept.
prostoalex writes "The Guardian takes a look at the current developments in the world of holographic storage. Despite being available in research for over 40 years, the technology is getting commercialized only now, with InPhase Technologies launching its 600 GB write-once disk and a drive this fall. What avout the price? "The first holographic products are certainly not mass-market — a 600GB disc will cost around $180 (£90), and the drive costs about $18,000. Potential users include banks, libraries, government agencies and corporations.""
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Science: Microholography Could Lead to 500 GB Discs 158 comments
angrykeyboarder writes "Scientists have discovered a way to fit 500 GB of data onto DVD-sized discs. These discs would be created with a process called 'microholography, which combines multilayer storage of data with holographic imagery. From the article: 'Microholography allows data to be stored in three dimensions. The technology works by replacing the two-dimensional pit-land structures currently found on CDs and DVDs with microgratings, which are holographically induced using two laser beams. In other words, instead of recording to a series of bumps and pits like standard CDs, the new technology creates three-dimensional holographic grids that can be used for reading and writing data throughout the physical structure of the disc.'"
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Good thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Good thinking. I mean, if they were launching the disk without the drive (or even the other way round) it would be a lot less likely to succeed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good thinking (Score:5, Interesting)
So says you.
Bleeding edge is always a ridiculous expense. The people who are willing to be there already know who they are. That you even raise this question means that you are not.
OTOH, neither am I, but that's not the point. The point is, this is the first commercial volley of a new technology, which means that a few years hence it will be cheaper with even higher data densities.
Meaning, potentially, something like the entire run of every season of every Star Trek series ever... on one disc.
Re:Good thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Good thinking. I mean, if they were launching the disk without the drive (or even the other way round) it would be a lot less likely to succeed.
Yeah, that would be like a game company shipping a console before any games are available for it. Err...wait...
Re:Good thinking (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good thinking (Score:5, Informative)
2) Transfer speed
3) (600 gigabytes) / (600 megabytes) = 1 024 times better
Re:Good thinking (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about that... Five years is a long time to find a hash collision. So what happens to
Re:Good thinking (Score:4, Funny)
"What is a 'file', granpa?"
libraries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they could spent the £9000 on, y'know, say... books.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll pass (Score:5, Funny)
It is all about data transfer speed... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It is all about data transfer speed... (Score:4, Informative)
I could be wrong, but are you implying that people will use this because it's got 160Mbit/sec write time? Keep in mind that this is 20MB/sec. That's a little low for the standard harddrive, and you can increase it by adding more drives in a sequential raid.
If that's the speed, then it absolutely isn't a good reason to use this.
The only advantage this actually has is information density. One 600GB disc is going to be pretty tiny compared to an array of harddrives designed to get the speed up.
Is that worth it for a library or bank? My inclination would be no. A couple hundred harddrives in a SAN is probably a better idea.
The market will be those individuals that absolutely, positively need the discs to be tiny, and nothing else matters. Because this tech isn't going to do anything else better than what we've already got.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, you can build a multiterabyte disk-to-disk backup system with gigabit transferrates out of common of the shelf hardware for less than $1000.
The cost of having backups can certainly be made a lot less th
There is a need... (Score:5, Insightful)
The manufacturer rates it at 50 year archival life, with no specifics about how that number was derived (is that an average? guaranteed for every piece of media? until an error rate of "x" is encountered? under what storage conditions?).
It's a proprietary solution, from a single startup company - what are the odds that a reader is going to exist in 50 years? Note that the manufacturer specifically warns of a lack of backward compatibility when they state "Drive is backward read compatible for three generations; 18-24 months between generations." Having an archive of data which is inaccessible doesn't get you much.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A real product? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Always the same debate with new technologies, especially storage - too expensive, something else is better etc. etc. Goes all the way back to floppy disks vs. ethernet. The first hard drives
Help me... (Score:5, Funny)
Ultra high definition media (Score:3, Interesting)
The disc in question is much more elegant and cool than a stack of bulky, noisy hard disks. Elegant and cool may sound petty, but they sell for certain kinds of people with too much money. They even sell RCA cables for more than $18,000.
Forget the capacity... (Score:3, Funny)
This is STILL just worthless, and vapor... (Score:4, Interesting)
SirWired
Re:But why? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is in NO way a long term backup solution.