New storage capacity

[GideonK]

May never have to delete anything, ever.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8021012.stm

[Number Six]

I read about this a few years ago - glad to see it has come to this point. I do think that there will be consumer interest, just wondering what the initial price point will be.

[edDV]

I could use a 25 pack today.

[Dv8ted2]

I read about this a few years ago - glad to see it has come to this point. I do think that there will be consumer interest, just wondering what the initial price point will be.

Several arms and legs, I am afraid...

[edDV]

It will probably go through an adoption phase similar to the "Professional Disc" (BE Blu-Ray in a cartridge) intended for pro archive market. They get priced high until the business market starts to saturate, then consumer versions are offered with 10x price decline.

[Supreme2k]

I got a 100 spindle of Ridata 800GB single layer discs from newegg for $37.99. Can't wait until a player comes out!

[VegasBud]

It's kind of hard to stay enthused about holographic storage. As Number Six pointed out, they've been talking about this for years, and as this article confirms, "the technology is still in the laboratory stage"...exactly where it always has been.

I used to have high hopes for InPhase's "Tapestry" line of drives, but after years of postponed shipping dates, it's still not shipping. The last I heard it's now pushed back until the fourth quarter of this year. Frankly, I'll believe it when I see it ship, and not until then.

As for the cost, the Tapestry 300 GB drive was originally $18,000, with the disks priced at $180. With inflation, it might currently be more like $20,000 for the drive and $200+ for disks...if you could get one...but you can't...so it's all speculation.

[Bjs]

There goes the weekend

[greymalkin]

yep...this crops up every few years...

..the story, that is..not anything tangible.

[lordsmurf]

Optical drives are out, solid-state is in.

[PuzZLeR]

"The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think.''

Yeah right.

I'm in the same sentiment as a few posts here. They've been talking about these mega, many-GB, storage discs for well over 5 years now. Even when they first mentioned something called a "blu-ray disc" years ago - something that would store "something like 25GB or 50GB" - is still major chump-change today to purchase. This is still after many (and I emphasize "many") years later. So I can only imagine how much longer these items will take to be "affordable"...

I, like edDV, could use a couple of dozen myself. But, after all this yap and teasing about it, it's getting a tad annoying. Bring it already.

It will probably go through an adoption phase similar to the "Professional Disc" (BE Blu-Ray in a cartridge) intended for pro archive market. They get priced high until the business market starts to saturate, then consumer versions are offered with 10x price decline.

Yup. They'll be skimming the market first before we land such babies in our hands at the price we're currently enjoying for DvD-Rs today.

In the meantime we'll still be storing our DV source and HD content rather painfully for some time yet...

DvD-R seems so tiny now...

[Browncoat]

I agree with Lordsmurf, solid state seems to be the go. 64GB sd cards a bit bigger than your fingernail..amazing, and no moving parts! I'd be interested in projected lifespans of solid state storage media though.

[lordsmurf]

Solid-state is not as damaged by humidity, temperature or scratches.

[raffie]

I read somewhere cost would initially be 0.10$ per gigabytes, so 50$ per disk, wich is reasonable enough. It is in fact, about the same price per gig as DVD-R's only you need only 1 disc instead of 120 xD

[RLT69]

Optical drives are out, solid-state is in.

They are not meant for permanent storage. They are good for temporary stuff but long term archiving, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive#Disadvantages

[lordsmurf]

A write-once SSD wouldn't degrade in theory.

[dadrab]

I read somewhere cost would initially be 0.10$ per gigabytes, so 50$ per disk, wich is reasonable enough. It is in fact, about the same price per gig as DVD-R's only you need only 1 disc instead of 120 xD

You hit the nail on the head...i.e. made a point and killed it in two lines

Does anyone really think a company will go to the trouble to R&D and market a consumer disc to sell one or two to a household for a mere $50 a copy? Granted, some us us might need 25 or 30, but still, no one's going to make a living like that.

The numbers just aren't there at such a low price point.

[DereX888]

May never have to delete anything, ever.

Are you sure you really would want to have it that way?
(not to delete anything, ever)

[PuzZLeR]

May never have to delete anything, ever.

Are you sure you really would want to have it that way?
(not to delete anything, ever)

I just wonder if, wanting inexpensive 500GB discs and/or the freedom from needing to delete anything qualifies us as digital, or video, pack-rats.

[dadrab]

I just wonder if, wanting inexpensive 500GB discs and/or the freedom from needing to delete anything qualifies us as digital, or video, pack-rats.

Me personally? Yeah, probably... 8)

[PuzZLeR]

Yeah... me too...

[DereX888]

It is nice that the optical storage capacity might be capable of hitting terabyte soon, but that's not all that counts.
The speed at which data is written to such media is IMHO more important than the capacity.
I see no use for those 500GB or 1TB discs if we would have to wait probably several hours until such drive completes writing up back up of a harddisk... I'd just buy another harddisk instead and have it done way much faster.

Future is in SSD.
These new optical storage formats are simply too late.
The only feature that might introduce them to our daily use is if they could read and write with same speeds as at least SATA1.
It reminds me of DVD-RAM - large space revolutionary format (in its time) that never really "caught on" not only due to its initially high drives and media prices, but also because of its too slow writing speeds.

[SatStorm]

It is nice to see those discs finally take form.
I could use them.

Solid Memory is nice too, but I love to see alternatives. Cheap ones, better.

[edDV]

Optical storage must have a long term data reliability advantage to be successful. All other factors favor a hard drive.

[DereX888]

It is nice to see those discs finally take form.
I could use them.

I agree, but don't misunderstand me
Would you be using i.e. DVD-Rs today as your (probably) main writable format if they were still going at 1x or 2x burn speed?
I doubt it... simply the required burning time would not permit you to burn more than just few discs a day, not to mention that making a backup of mere 40GB HDD would take you more than 10 hrs... and that's my point. DVD-R-writables became main format because they are somewhat fast, at least they are fast enough for average user (and also because they became so cheap - thanks to their ubiquity).
It took ~10years for DVD-RAMs to reach laughable 6x write speed (rev. 1.2 IIRC) while WORM DVD-Rs sped up from 2x to 12x in 1/3 of that time. That's why IMHO it wasn't the price of DVD-RAMs (which would come down significantly if they would have "caught on") but their mediocre speed that added to their demise. DVD-RAM were superior to DVD-R/+R and had same capacity, but they lost because of their speed (again - their prices would have certainly dropped a lot if they would have become as popular as DVD-Rs).

These 500GB discs better have some good writable speeds, otherwise they'll never find a market outside some specialized uses only (like it were with DVD-RAM).

Optical storage must have a long term data reliability advantage to be successful. All other factors favor a hard drive.

I think current optical disc technologies warrant at least 20 year life span for WORM discs, right? That's already more than probable lifespan of modern harddisks (unles they are not used, treated as WORM)

[VegasBud]

These 500GB discs better have some good writable speeds, otherwise they'll never find a market outside specialized data storage facilities and such.

The InPhase Tapestry 300 GB has a read/write data rate of ~20 MB/s, or ~15x (as expressed relative to dvd's data rate). The data rate is pretty much limited by the current requirement for the spinning disk to come to a stop in order to read/write.

Since InPhase has most of the patents for the technology, and nobody else is even pretending to be scheduling the release of a usable system, it's probably a pretty good indication of the first realistic holographic implementation.

And yes, their initial market is for specialized data storage facilities.

Optical storage must have a long term data reliability advantage to be successful.

The same logic that pigeonholes dvd media longevity as 10-20 years puts holographic longevity as 50-100 years. That would be very appealing to those with serious digital archiving tasks.

[PuzZLeR]

Is long-term reliability really that important? Sure, 5 years is important enough. But 20 years? 50 years? In that time span there should always be something "better" to migrate your archival content to.

I've already done this with 5.25" -> 3.5" -> Zip -> CD-R(W) -> DvD-R(W) -> External drives, and will do it with the next, and more efficient, thing. Five years was pretty much the maximum I ever needed for any antecedent unit.

[SatStorm]

Well, I imagine that those discs won't take more than an hour or two when they finally made it in the market DereX888! I mean, the success on optical media need to combine 3 elements: Storage space, Writing speed and Price!
After all, we won't buy those discs before they end up costing 5 euros and be able to burn them in 30 min!

Regarding the importance of Long-term reliability: Well, actually yes, today in my mid 30s (35 actually) I see that it is important. Very important! I bet the older I became, the more it counts - for me at least! -
You see, I burn to store something today and I may need it again in 10 - 15 years, after a digital disaster or something (it happens...). So, I wish to have a back up on something that I trust. I don't trust HDD and I don' t know how those memory based solutions hold. But I know that CDs I burn myself back in the late 90s, still work perfect. So, I trust the optical solutions because I have test them for more than 10 years and I know they work.

Something similar happened with my early 80s VHS tapes - and thank God they still play OK! -

[DereX888]

These 500GB discs better have some good writable speeds, otherwise they'll never find a market outside specialized data storage facilities and such.

The InPhase Tapestry 300 GB has a read/write data rate of ~20 MB/s, or ~15x (as expressed relative to dvd's data rate).

That's what I was talking about.

I'm not sure you mean 20 megabytes or megabits per second, but it doesn't matter at this point.
Basically user won't be able to burn more than 1 full disc PER DAY



Assuming write speed of 20 megabits per second:
20 megabits per second is ~2.5 MB (megabytes) per second.
500GB = 521,000 MB (megabytes)

512000 / 2.5 = 204800 (seconds to write the full disc)
which is
204800 / 60 = 3413 minutes
which is
3413 / 60 = 56.8 hours

Assuming write speed of 20 megabytes per second:
512000 / 20 = 25600 (seconds to write the disc)
which is
25600 / 60 = 426.6 minutes
which is
426.6 / 60 = 7.1 hours


Either way burning such disc is a painfully slow process and let's not forget my calculations shown above DON'T include verify time, which usually is longer than write time, as CDs and DVDs taught us.
(assuming your information about their write speed is correct).
I don't know about most of yous, but certainly I wouldn't buy such drive. 500GB on a disc is tempting, yes, but 7hrs to write a disc is a show stopper (56hrs obviously is a no go at any point).
If the time to burn such disc would drop to say 2, maybe 3 hours I could see any future for those discs.
But again, using second harddisk (or third/fourth/fifth/...) *is* way more feasible at this point.

[VegasBud]

DereX888,

I'm not sure you mean 20 megabytes or megabits per second...

Yes, that's 20 megabytes per second (160 megabits per second). According to InPhase:

The Tapestry300r will enable broadcasters to record 35 hours of broadcast-quality (19 Mbps) video on a single disk in 250 minutes (160 Mbps transfer rate)

So that would be about 4 hours 10 minutes to record a 300 GB disk.

By the time they get to the 1.6 TB disk, they plan on seeing 120 MB/s data rate...but until they at least release the 300 GB disk system, I tend to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

While the 300 GB may not be rocket fast, this page sure does make it sound good:

26 hours of video; 25mbps
20 hours of video; 32 mbps
13 hours of video; 50 mbps
7.4 hours of video; 90 mbps
6.7 hours of video; 100mbps HD
25 minutes of uncompressed HD; 1600mbps