Even though the forum title doesn't include this subject, I think this is the place to ask about the "next generation" (or maybe "next next generation") technology.

The official announcements from the developers of holographic storage are quite aggressive, but I know I shouldn't believe all such advertizements literally. Does anyone have an idea or an information how realistic this is? At least they seem to have media and writers that very easily surpass any existing optical drive technology.

@ Apart from the reality.... I'm sure this is a really "cool" and "attractive" idea for those who seriously studied physics.

Any links to how holographic storage would work? I understand the principle behind holographs but I dont see how you could put something in it, keep it and retrieve it. Too mindbogglin for my brain at this hour

If you know the fundamental physics of hologram, It's very simple. (At least the beginning is..)
Make a plate with black and white squares. (black = 1, white = 0)
Then take a hologram picture of it. The film stores all the data and you know how to recover it. Just illuminate the media with the reference beam and look at the screen.

The gain of hologram is.. you can store multiple images with different reference beams on one media. There's some more story which I can't fully explain to you now but I can tell you the results.

A fundamental limit of dvd is (roughly) 1 bit of data per L^2 area. (L is the laser wavelength.) A hologram media can't break this rule but instead it stores 1 bit of data per L^3 volume. The thickness of a media is practically limited but it's still like having a DVD with 100 layers. (No surprise they talk about media with terabyte capacity.)

I was a little bit hesitant to link this because I din't want to advertize a company. But they are the only one that I know of doing this commercially.

http://www.inphase-technologies.com/technology/
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/...our/index.html

One other place worth checking is howstuffworks.com:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/ho...hic-memory.htm

Back in April, Optware released news on their upcoming holographic graphic disc and recorder. They aim to start shipping a holographic recorder by Summer 2005 with a disc capacity ranging between 200GB and 300GB.

I have a 250GB firewire hard drive and while I have this thing nealy full, it currently does me well. Then again, someday I will find even a 250GB disc (if such a size does exist) too small

I don't remember where I read it, but I thought that if a hologram was cut in half, it became 2 of the original hologram...does that have any bearing on this topic?

here maybe? http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu.../holog.html#c4