Holographic Storage this year

[Asus]

Hitachi-Maxell to Ship Holographic Storage this Year

"Maxell's director of technical marketing Rich D'Ambrise said that 300GB holographic discs will be available in November or December of this year. Maxell also indicated that sometime in 2008, the company will be introducing second generation disc that store up to 800GB of data. By 2010, Maxell is hoping to introduce 1.6TB holographic discs."

"As of now, the new holographic drives will cost roughly $15,000 to enterprises and media will cost roughly anywhere from $120 to $180 per disc. The media is currently a write-once only media, with a lifetime of roughly 50 years. Maxell hopes to improve these figures by the time 2008 comes around."

Expensive...

 

[Hectic Glenn]

That's incredible, 800GBs per disc is surely too big for anything we need! (industrial use i suppose)

 

[Stigmata]

I'm still waiting for them to figure out rewritable holographic drives. Not to say that this isn't a huge technological step forwards

 

[NetGuru42]

That's incredible, 800GBs per disc is surely too big for anything we need! (industrial use i suppose)

I believe it's targeted mainly at enterprise-level backup for now.

This technology shows promise, but I'm afraid that just like the ZIP disk, it will be an expensive niche market (even after it drops down to consumer level) that lasts for a few years, but is more trouble than it is eventually worth. Time will tell.

 

[Asus]

If it ever gets to consumer level prices in a couple of years say goodbye to blueray and hd-dvd. lol
But yeah it will most likely stay $$ for awhile and only certain industries will pick it up.

 

[Viperidae]

800gb DVD's would kill. Imagine how much less compression there'd be...