InPhase ships 300GB holographic media.

[roma_turok]

InPhase Technologies has begun bulk shipping of its 300GB holographic storage disks and drives, the firm said yesterday. The Tapestry HDS-300R drive costs $18,000, with the 1.5mm-thick platters running to $180 a piece. The firm already claims a series of high profile customers, including Turner Broadcasting, the US Geological Survey, and Lockheed Martin.

InPhase's roadmap sees a series of capacity increases, with disks expanded to 1.6TB in 2010. Data is currently transferred from the platters, which are expected to have a 50-year lifespan, at 20MBps

InPhase marketing VP Liz Murphy said: "We've also tried to make it as easy to integrate as possible from a software perspective. So it can emulate a DVD, CD-R, magnetic optical disc or tape drive. So software companies don't have to do any major changes to write to it in native mode."

Despite pitching the price point somewhere in the mid to high-end tape drive, InPhase says it is not interested in the backup market and will concentrate on archiving. CEO Nelson Diaz said: "We're not going to play in the back-up market at all."

A re-writeable version of the format is expected in 2008, however.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/13/inphase_shipping_holographic/

[CrayonEater]

Welcome to HVD. Now let's forget about BR and HD.

[RabidDog]

Thats never gonna fit in a 1u or 2u rack!

[kmorger]

I know why the box is so big, and expensive...

Internally, it's got a bunch of 750GB hard disks to hold all the actual data, and the "holodisk" simply selects what data is selected. Kind of like the Fisher Price CD player when the holes on the plastic record determine which internal built-in song will play.

Of course, the gig's up if you buy too many holodisks (ie. you'd run out of space on the internal hard drives and figure out what they were doing), BUT they figure at $180 per holodisk, nobody will ever own enough to figure it out...

OK, joking asside, that is ONE BIG AND EXPENSIVE BEAST. A couple years ago, the size probably wouldn't have shocked me, but with 500GB hard disks going for $140 or less, well... $18,180 for 300GB is just SAD.

OK, say they give you the first disk free, well, that's $18,000 for 300GB.
OK, say they give you the first *200* disks free. That's $18,000 for 60000GB, some serious storage. But, even with the first *200* disks free (which they would NEVER do), it's STILL cheaper just to buy hard disks. At *some* point, they would have to charge you for disks, and GOD, at $180 for 300GB???

OK, favorite line "A re-writeable version of the format is expected in 2008, however.". OK, so for $18000 and $180, I can't even re-use the disk? Somewhere along the line, something screws up, and I have a $180 COASTER???

I have a new slogan for their company.

InPhase Technologies
The Tech Company Moores Law Forgot.

EDIT:
OK, you probably think I'm being unfair. It's a different technology. It's new. Apples and Oranges... Well, Blah!

Both CDs and DVDs initially claimed massive life spans, which brings up to very important points.

Point #1. When CDs were intraduced, hard disks on average computers where 100MB or less. DVDs same thing, they dwarfed the tech. When holographic storage was introduced, it did indeed dwarf HD tech at the time, but that was YEARS ago. It took them WAY to long to get to market.

Point #2. How many hard drives have you had go belly up? I've had a few, and it sucks. But both CD and DVD, and now Holographic, well they all claimed MASSIVE life spans.

Guess what... I've had more CDs and DVDs go belly up than hard disks. BY MANY ORDERS OF MAGNATUDE. The only thing that was worse than optical was floppies.

I don't claim that even RAID-5 is a perfect archival format, but at least in it's current state, holographic is not a viable alternative. If they kicked up the storage by a factor of at LEAST 10, and dropped the proce by a factor of at LEAST 5, and maybe dropped the size of that box by a factor of 2, it'd be quite cool.

As it stands, I file this under the heading "would-a-could-a-should-a", with book marks to the original press debutes dated many years ago.

2010???? God, we'll probably have RAM that big by then...

[FulciLives]

It's the ZIP DISC phenomena again ... only this time with much greater capacity. I still can't believe I wasted money on that damn ZIP DISC crap.

ZIP DISC details ---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_disc

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[yoda313]

Were zip discs around before or after cdr's??? I can't remember exactly when they hit the market.

Anyone remember the SUPER FLOPPY??? What were those 2.4megabytes??? (wasn't that a sony propreity format??? )

[vico1]

I still can't believe I wasted money on that damn ZIP DISC crap.

You ain't alone there brother!
I think I still have a couple drives, and some 250MB zip discs around, under some
old parts stashed around here I bet...wait a minute...I gotta' go look... :P