Holographic storage has become a reality, according to a start-up that launched its product in the US this week.
hVault claims its holographic disk storage system will offer companies a new archiving technology with a lifespan of more than 50 years.
There is no other technology that comes close to the benefits of holographic storage for active archive applications.
Holographic storage uses lasers to write and extract data rather than magnetic tape. By using lasers, tapes and hard drives are not as damaged as they are by magnets, meaning the data can be written many more times and is resistant to changes in temperature, humidity and electro-magnetic fields.
The company claims this technology is perfecting for archiving, enabling customers with high density video needs or large scale organisations including Government and healthcare to have all the capacity they need and the security of a long term archiving solution.
"The vastly expanding storage needs of the professional video industry have dictated migrating to a secure, long-life format, and holographic storage is the benchmark for archival video storage," said Bland McCartha, vice president of sales for hVault.
"The characteristics of our library systems will enable companies who have already digitised their content, as well as the vast collections of analogue video that still require digitisation, to safely store their content and provide rapid access for monetisation of that archival content. There is no other technology that comes close to the benefits of holographic storage for active archive applications."
On top of this, hVault said the total cost of ownership would be slashed as the systems only need to be replaced every 50 years rather than every two to three years with magnetic storage and power consumption would be significantly reduced to 1/100th of current deployments.
hVault chose to launch the company at this week's National Association of Broadcaster's (NAB's) conference in Las Vegas to target video customers.
We contacted the firm to find out when the first systems would launch in the UK, but it had not responded to our request at the time of publication.
This is not the first time lasers have been introduced to storage systems to improve performance.
Back in February, researchers from the University of York claimed using an additional third magnetic in typical storage could speed up the time to write data through heat, and planned on introducing a laser to do this task as the next stage.
