Holographic Storage a Reality in 2006? 214
vitaly.friedman writes "What do you do when you're getting close to the limits of 2-dimensional optical technology? Well, how many dimensions do we have to work with?" From the Ars Technica article: "How much greater data density? In the Hitachi Maxell device, a single disc about 1 cm larger in diameter than a CD will buy you 300GB. By way of contrast, HD-DVD currently offers a maximum of 30GB on a 2-layer disc, and Blu-ray tops out at 50GB. Although upgrades are in the works that promise to increase the capacity of both of those formats, even the most pie-in-the-sky predictions fall short of what is planned for merely the first commercial generation of holographic storage. Future plans for that medium include boosting the capacity to 800GB in two years, and 1.6TB per disc by 2010."
I don't want a disc 1cm larger than a CD!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
1 CM larger? (Score:5, Insightful)
A backup solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A backup solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, how many dimensions do we have to work wi (Score:3, Insightful)
"How" is Largely Irrelevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way, I recently found out about the Data Storage Industry Wiki [pbwiki.com]. From a business perspective, this is pretty cool. They talk about trends and big picture stuff, and there are many good links to useful resources and smart people. Good stuff; relevant.
Re:"How" is Largely Irrelevant. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:1 CM larger? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you try to get a new technology to exit the birthing process completely ready to sell, you're going to overwhelm your poor engineers.
Re:A backup solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they've just bought the wrong batches of media. I have some CD-Rs (Memorex) that I burned in 1997 which are still perfectly readable. I have some other CD-Rs (a PNY spindle, I think) that started to show unrecoverable errors within months. Maybe some brand names are cheaper than others, but I've also had good discs from PNY, and I wouldn't be surprised if other people have encountered bad Memorexes.
Sometimes when other people say something that sounds "full of shit", the problem is actually just that you think you know everything, and you're wrong.