Holographic Storage

[Rancid34]

What in the heck is holographic storage. i dont understand the concept or how it works. Im too lazy to wikipedia or google it so i was hoping someone in here might know. :?:

 

[dean7]

To gain understanding of something one must not be lazy. If you care, get off your a$$ and do some research. I'll even look the pages up for you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_memory
http://news.com.com/Maxell+focuses+on+holographic+storage/2100-1015_3-5973868.html
http://news.zdnet.com/2036-2_22-5604861.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060804-7424.html

Anyway, I don't understand how people are lazy and think that it's going to be easier to read what people on the forumz say than it will be to just read what articles say. What's with that?

 

[lcdguy]

i'm no expert on the subject but it would basically record the data holographically instead of magnetically. The the problem is making the holographic re-writable.

 

[dean7]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but you are wrong.

It is still an optical drive, but instead of storing the data only on surface area, it stores it using the entire area of the media. So, in oversimplified terms you can think of it like this:

DVD/Blu-Ray store things on the surface of the optical media. So if you had (in theory) a square disc that was 4mm tall and 4mm wide and 4mm deep, you would get 16mm of usable storage area (for lack of a better term) or Height x Width (of course with dual-layer that could be X2).

If you are storing things using holographic storage methodology and you are using a square disc with the same dimensions, you would have 64mm of usable storage area or height x width x depth. This is why Maxell is planning on having 1.6TB discs by 2010, which is beyond the current theoretical limits of Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Make sense?

And please, correct me if I'm wrong here people, because I'm not an expert in optical storage.

 

[Dante_Jose_Cuervo]

No, you've pretty much given us the idiots guide to holographic storage.

Now... to expand on it here's how it works (slightly more simplified)

Normal optical discs (cds, dvds, blu-ray, hd-dvd) only store the data on a horizontal pattern. Think of it like a hard drive platter. It's only stored parallel to the surface that it's reading/writing. Now... holographic is quite different - it records horizontally, vertically and diagonally. Essentially it's VERY efficient in terms of how much space can be used for storing data.