Holographic storage promises immense storage densities and capacities with fast access times. InPhase, according to VNUnet has demonstrated over 500GB of capacity per square inch. InPhase is claiming they will ship drives with removable holographic disks with 300GB capacity and 20Mbps transfer rate later this year.
I love holographic technology and wish InPhase the best, but I don’t believe they have a viable business with their technology – yet. The problem: 3.5″ disk drives will reach 750GB by the end of this year with much faster transfer rates. InPhase’s 20 Mbps is only 2.5 million bytes per second or only 9GB per hour. It will take over 30 hours just to fill one disk! I predict that hard drives will still be more convenient and fairly cost-competitive than this promising new technology.
But keep at it guys. Lightning will strike if your investors are patient enough.
LOL!!! They are talking about Removable Media not a hard drive replacement.
Yes, it amazes me too. If the transfer rate gets cranked it could be a tape replacement. Maybe an archive medium, only if people can be sure they’ll still be around in 10 or 15 years.
For all that I expect that Seagate will simply build a big, rugged disk drive designed for long-term power-off storage – maybe with magneto-optical technology for EMP protection – package it like a tape with some simple, real common interface, like USB 2, and call it done.
Seems like it would cover all the bases.