500 GB capacity Optical Storage

[ZUSE]

   

Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn on March 27, 2006 - 2:05 AM

InPhase, which has promised to bring the first holographic disk drive to market later this year, has reached another milestone in the development of its storage media. The company more than doubled the storage density on its holographic disks within one year to 515 Gbit/in2 which should lead the way to DVD-sized media with well above 500 GB capacity.

With high definition audio and video around the corner, the capacity of Blu-ray and HD-DVD media isn't quite as stunning as the specifications may suggest. 50 GB Blu-ray disks - which can store about two HD movies - is simply just good enough, especially if we consider the fact that these disks aren't available yet. Organizations that need to store enormous amounts of data are likely to look elsewhere: While tape drives are likely remain the dominant solution for backing up data, holographic drives could soon become an option when data not only needs to be stored, but also instantly accessed.

The company did not detail the total capacity of the Tapestry media when recorded in 515 Gbit/in2 density. However, InPhase mentioned that such a disk, which measures 5.25" in diameter, could hold 106 DVD movies. Assuming that InPhase hinted to a DVD movie size of 4.7 GB, the capacity of the demonstrated disk would be about 500 GB. We are currently waiting for InPhase to reply to our inquiry on the total capacity of the disk and we will update this article as soon as the company provides more specific information.

InPhase previously said that it will be releasing its first holographic disk drive as well as 300 GB holographic media later this year. The data transfer performance is expected to be about 20 MB/s, while the demo announced today topped 23 MB/s InPhase said. According to the company, the first generation of Tapestry media will be followed by a disk family ranging from 800GB to 1.6 TB capacity.

There has been no recent information on the price of the holographic disk drive generation. In April of 2005, the company told us that the drives will be priced initially around $10,000. Media will cost around $100, we were told.

Source: TGDaily

Mad 

[Spazosaurus]

Hmmmm those are some pretty insane prices there. Clearly this technology is meant for the enterprise crowd, at least until some time passes and those prices drop to a level that the consumer can afford. Although when the prices are that high ti start, its kinna hard to imagine it will drop any where near consumer level.

[Gambitt]

Yeah, but for some pretty insane storage. What yuh run of the mill user would use that drive for?

I could see myself being quite happy with only 4 disks total, for now at least. (Assuming I can write multiple sessions to one disk there.)

One for movies, one for music, one for games and one to back up my HDD from time to time. That way I could just buy a handfulla DVDRWs and CDRWs at a time and use those if I have to have a everyday use copy of the data.

But seriously, as it is right now I feel bad burning files to a DVD for someone and not being able to fill it to the brim. Those disks would send me insane.

[Spazosaurus]

I can think of a lot of people who wouldn't mind ah drive and a couple of those disks. Hell, is someone said that they had an extra one of those drives and some disks to give away to some lucky GATT member, men would be climbing over one another to get it (me included).

The price that those things start to sell for though tells me that it ain't going to come near consumer levels anytime soon. If they had started at $1,000 there would have been a better chance but not 10 grand. The price per GB is just too high. Right now, men better of slapping a lil 500GB hdd for ~ $300 in ah external case and treating that as a means of backup. Not only would it be cheaper, it would be more compatible as it can work on its own without the need for an insanely priced player.

[ZUSE]

I can think of a lot of people who wouldn't mind ah drive and a couple of those disks. Hell, is someone said that they had an extra one of those drives and some disks to give away to some lucky GATT member, men would be climbing over one another to get it (me included).

LOL Hint@GATT 

[Andrew_005]

lol...maybe i'd use it to store my anime collection, then again i'd probably need four of em disks