Holographic storage to go commercial

We will see the début of 500 GB disk drives as standards for holographic storage and commercial holographic storage products in 2006. Hitachi is looking to propel its 3.5 inches line of drives (commonly used to store desktop computer files) into new markets. It plans to ship a hard drive that holds 500 GB of data by the end of Q1 2005.

Optware will have specifications for its holographic storage technology approved by an international standards body called Ecma International in 2006. The company is developing technology that puts 100 GB-1 TB of data, with data transmission speeds of 100 Mbps-1 Gbps, on discs that are of the same diameter as today's CDs and DVDs.

Another storage solution provider, InPhase Technologies, has demonstrated the first fully-functioning prototype of its Tapestry holographic drive at the 2005 Storage Visions conference held in Las Vegas. The company's holographic storage media stores data in 3-D holograms cut into a polymer material that's 1.5 mm (0.06 inch) thick and is placed between two 130 mm (5.1-inch) plastic discs. Since holographic devices are able to store data in 3D 'pages,' they should have a greater capacity than today's CDs or DVDs that store data only on the disc's surface (except for dual-layer DVDs-they have two layers of data). By 2009, InPhase hopes to be shipping drives that can store as much as 1.6 TB on a single disc.