27 Apr G.E. storage breakthrough can put 100 DVDs or 500GB on a Disc
General Electric announced today that it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will it to store standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 500GB or 100 DVDs.
The current technology is in the labs right now but, could become commercially available in the near future at affordable prices according to the company.
According to an article in The NY Times, “ This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of laser-etched marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known. The first research papers were published in the early 1960s.
In G.E.’s approach, the holograms are scattered across a disc in a way that is similar to the formats used in today’s CDs, conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs. So a player that could read microholographic storage discs could also read CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. But holographic discs, with the technology G.E. has attained, could hold 500 gigabytes of data. Blu-ray is available in 25-gigabyte and 50-gigabyte discs, and a standard DVD holds 5 gigabytes
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