Holographic Storage Nearing Availability, At 150GB Per Disc

Burn DVD’s much? Ever curious about how long the data will remain on those discs? That’s a common worry nowadays, and for good reason. If you burn precious family photos, you’d rather them be safe. Essentially, the only way to combat this going forward would be to re-burn our media as time passes, which would likely be to new media formats each time (given that we will likely be using a completely new media type every ten years).

Company InPhase has a solution to this problem though, albeit an expensive one. Their “holographic” storage system allows you to store upwards of 150GB per disc ($180 each) at a rather slow 20MBps. Slow, but InPhase promises that the discs can last upwards of 50 years. That’s a lot, considering the shelf life of a standard DVD is much less. Not to mention that DVD’s hold a lot less.

But if you are like me and refuse to pay the $18,000 for the recorder itself, then it’s best to just take good care of your DVDs. The leading killer of optical media is having them lying around the house, or leaving them in direct sunlight. Storing them in a dark place and sealed off air-tight should prolong the life dramatically.

Questions over long-term backwards compatibility may also blunt Tapestry 300r sales. The company’s literature states that the yet-to-be-released Tapestry 800r and 1600r will be backwards compatible with 300r discs, but does not state that the 300r will be able to read 800r and 1600r media once those discs are available.

Source: Ars Technica