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Holographic storage drives capable of up to 1TB of data storage may be available as early as this year, says Tokyo-based Optware Corp. Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) will be capable of massive storage, as well as transfer rates of up to 1 GB per second. Optware’s announced came less than a week after a similar announcement from InPhase Technologies. InPhase recently began shipping its GDS5000 HVD drives based on WORM (Write Once Read Many) technology. A newer version, the Tapestry HDS-200R will be a fully recordable 200GB drive with 20MB per second transfer – it is expected to hit markets later this year. The advantage of using HVD style media is that, unlike optical discs like DVD and CD, HVD can read or write 10KB of data in parallel (optical data requires this to be done bit by bit). In addition, because data isn’t being read sequentially, there is no need for the disc to spin. In addition to increased storage capacity, potential benefits include reducing costs of storage by radically increased density and easier management. Brian Babinea, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy group, said the solution could solve the current disc space to floor volume issues enterprises are running into. "Right now, all business continuity plans include some sort of off-site storage, and the density and mobility of HVD media can make it more cost-effective to send data offsite," he said. But until these products actually hit the market, it's all speculation, he said. "HVD offers tremendous amounts of capacity, but they need to prove that the data can be accessed quickly without any quality degradation. Until then, it's a science project," he said. Optware and InPhase, as well as contenders Aprilis Inc. of Maynard, Mass. and Colossal Storage Corp. of San Jose, Calif., are doing their best to get HVD-based products to market and prove skeptics wrong. Both InPhase and Optware plan to have products available this year and to introduce more over the next several years.
by Jeremy C. Wright
Wow, that's going to be so cool! I wonder how much they'll charge for it and if the costs of smaller capacity hard drives will go way down.
Source: http://www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=579
-Dan The Man