GE Reports

I wish I understood the significance of 500GB storage on a disk. With 64 GB Thumb Drives available today and the capacity doubling every year or so, if it takes "a few more years" to bring GE’s technology to light (sorry, pun intended), the Thumb Drives will match its capacity and will use proven technology and be just as portable. Sure, you can’t easily ship a movie on a thumb drive, but movies don’t require a signifcant upgrade from Blu-Ray, do they?

Tim, this is an entry level technology. Look at the bigger picture – thumb drives have come a very long way in the 6 years that they have been commonplace office items.

The fact that technology like this is in development and shows potential is far more exciting than than the form and its constraints it is intitially being presented with.

HOLOGRAPHIC storage = GREENER planet, since every pack of 100 DVDs will be replaced by 1 holographic disk, resulting in less plastic in our environment.

Considering the numerous technical challenges and the competitive business environment this achievement will be recorded for sure in the famous GE’s Innovation Timeline!

@Tim – even more so, since thumb drives are solid state, protected by a plastic shell, and are pretty much indestructable. My son once took one out of the plastic shell, washed it several times in the washing machine, and was still able to use it.

Polycarbonate disks, on the other hand, are very prone to scratching, and the more data you cram on one, the more those scratches start to matter when you’re trying to read it.

So if I’m reading this correctly, we now have a massive step forward in optical(?) data storage, as opposed to magnetic and flash. It’s a shame there’s no way to simply write over previously-used optical media, or even recycle it. Which seems to be the pattern with technology – something new comes along, and we throw away the older one gradually.

Incidentally, what sort of read/write speeds can we expect once this really takes off?

@Bill – the question is not how many 100 DVD sets do we have now but what will be our digital storage needs in the future… I totally agree with above Lawrence quote that “our digital needs grow”.

You can buy today for few hundred dollars a high definition video camera with a 30 or 60 GB hard drive (HD) and realize that you don’t have enough storage capacity to record your vacation memories. What are your options to store that information when you get home? You either transfer it on a hard/thumb drive/memory card or burn it on 4, 7, 8 or 15 DVDs depending on the camera’s HD capacity or DVD media type used. Ok, there is also the magnetic tape solution.

The HD storage option is not very attractive since you could fill it up quite fast after which you have to store it and buy another one. Then you’ll need the second HD if you want digital storage redundancy.

I find the holographic DVD solution practical and greener even if it can hold 10 DVDs, if the price is right. Storing redundant data is also easier since you have to copy only 1 disk instead of x

Well the nice thing about this is that they won’t need a metal layer any more, at least that is what I got from the video. So no more metal = lower cost since all you would be paying for is the polycarbonate discs and dyes if it even uses them.
Also with out the metal layer you would need to phycialy break or melt the discs to destroy data
unlike with CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs which you can just toss in the microwave which damages the metal foil and the dye under it.

Does anyone recall those sony mini disks enclosed in a plastic enclosure and a plastic slide which covered the surface exposure [slide aside] of the disk, not dissimilar to the 3.5" "floppy" disks in the days of yore. This technique completely protects the medium from fingerprints, scratches, dust, you name it. A capitol investment would be required to adopt a similar protection of the GE disks. Further, the medium itself need not be the same size as a cd/dvd. It could be smaller and still pack a punch of say 25K Gig. I suspect these little jewels will ultimately hold 1T. I dont see it as a replacement for cd, dvd, or blu ray. Rather a new medium, but holding such a vast amount of data, it must be protected from the yoyos handling them like a hamburger in their hand, thus the cover over the read/write surface. Im repeating myself. Once it hits the streets pricing will drop as always. Let the pioneers get the arrows in their backs first before jumping on board. Nuff said.

Holographic memory / thumb drives would be a better medium way for personal data storage as CD / DVD / Blueray discs are quite vunerable to scratches and not they are not really very portable. I personally think that the long term strategy of any business’s archive won’t be versatile discs at all but Archive towers of Holomemory (SSD’s and better) which can be accessed at exceptionally low latency times via broadband or beyond and interface through fibre networking. This then relieves the need to archive data as such, as the data will always be online, and with todays encryptions, well holographic encryption would surely be the ultimate security. This all sounds SciFi but the technologies already exist, they’re just out of the reach of the average consumer and medium to small business. There should be no price for personal storage just a small token for the purchase of the product, as most research happens because corperates generally want the technology and pay for the technology as they need it, throught sponsorship or other means.

Data archive of Movies? surely this cannot be on the same scale as Data archive for Cancer research? Aids and other vaccination research or Radiography in hospitals. Yes enjoy the latest Blue Ray movies… players are still in the 100$ range after 3 years from initial launch and movies are (although slowly dropping) still over priced. Surely give the average consumer the ability to store 100 DVD onto 1 disc opens up the world of piracy, as GE say 500 cd’s of data thats 500 music albums to the average consumer. Movie and Music archives need to be completely different to that of the average consumer or the piracy will never stop. To succeed in the mass archive business one would expect mass produced media at cents per gig and reader / writers in the sub 30$ categories.

that is just my 50cents

Foolish people, Flash drives are not the future. Do you think that the capacity will keep expanding magically over time? Sure some Flash Drives can reach 120gb in storage but we can only physicaly fit so much data into a physical space. Holographic cubes probably protected inside a flash drive like case with their own r/w laser will be able to store terra bytes if not peta bytes of information. Sure movies as of right now do not store much information but in the future when holographic imaging on 2d surfaces becomes possible, all that space will be needed plus more. This is also going to be able make computures smaller, perform at literally the speed of light, And alot lighter. And to those who argue about durability and scratching, The industry of chemical science is bound to produce transparent liquid applications with streangth near that of diamond that are far supperior at resisting scratches and even the most hostile environments. And to the 100 disks on 1 holographic disk is mor eco friendly argument, Yes that is true that you probably wont buy 100 movies on 1 disk and save all that plastic, but less materials will be needed for a much larger data storage. Like all those programs, dvd box sets, video games ect. that have more than 1 disk will be able to fit all of the information on 1 disk instead on the 2~10 it would normaly take up. This would be in the long run saving alot of plastic and contaminates than producing 10 dvds for what could be fit onto a single holo disk. So in that case the holographic disk would be alot more eco friendly.

I see this being good for movie studios, so they can archive 4K resolution movies losslessly for future use. Much like film negatives are kept in salt mines.

Another thing about this holographic technology. IT need not be a disk. Solid state material can contain holographic data, without physical contact ever needing to be made. You could do the same thing with a completely solid state sheathed piece of holographic substrate not much larger than a credit card, with no moving parts at all. Just insert card into a r/w device as you might a memory car into a memory card reader.

please solve the following question?
1)While recording how laser changes its direction(angle).
2)Whether disc rotates while recording or not.

I actually heard that they were able to put ten terabytes of capacity onto a 26in disk or something.