Despite all the announcements Hitachi Maxell and InPhase have made about releasing holographic storage in the near future, they seem to keep delaying it, with new launch dates each time they make an announcement. This time, it looks like they will meet their original launch date they announced back in the beginning of 2005 that holographic storage will become a reality by November or December this year. InPhase originally began work on holographic storage back in 2000.
Originally InPhase planned on making 200GB HVD media with a 20Mbps transfer rate available by the end of 2006, but now expect to launch 300GB HVD media instead with a much faster transfer rate of 20MB/s. The disc size will be 130mm in diameter; 1cm wider than a CD/DVD. Maxell also announced that the company expects to launch 800GB sometime in 2008, with a target of 1.6TB per disc by 2010.
Just before you think Blu-ray and HD DVD writers and media are expensive, the first HVD reader & writer is expected to retail for US$15,000 with write-once 300GB HVD media costing somewhere between US$120-$180 a disc. A HVD has an expected lifetime life of 50 years. With the high pricing, this media will be first targeted at enterprise users where high capacity write-once media is required for backing up a significant amount of data. InPhase expects to mass produce drives and HVD media later on to target the rest of the market. Thanks to D4rk0n3 for letting us know about this news:
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In a report, D'Ambrise said "We're happy so far that we haven't hit any obstacles with the drive or the media, and that we're on schedule to deliver to the market." Maxell said that while the technology is currently limited to enterprise customers, producing mass market holographic media and drives shouldn't take long. The company is currently working on producing media in several sizes, including stamps, credit card and regular CD size cartridges. Consumer media will range from 75GB to 100GB in the first generation said D'Ambrise. The new 300GB discs will transfer data at roughly 20MB per second, but Maxell indicated that we should see faster rates as the technology progresses. Some further info can be read on this Ars Technica article. |
When compared with Super DLT, this media does have the advantage of quick data retrieval like that from other optical media as well as being more compact than a Super DLT tape. However, for a once off back-up where frequent reading back is not required, I cannot see any other advantage over a high capacity Super DLT tape drive. In fact, if write-protection is not essential, one can easily pick up of a 300GB hard drive for the price of a single 300GB HVD and chances are that the hard drive's lifetime will be longer than that of most optical media, especially if it is not frequently spun up hard drives used in PCs.
Source: Daily Tech News
The Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD battle will be over before it begins if this stuff can be released quickly and cheaply
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