InPhase finally to phase in holographic disk

RE: Offical secrets act

I'm sure they'll be sent through the post unencrypted well before then.

50 year lifespan

In 50 years time, just what will you find to play them back with ?

Delicious idea but...

In 50 years time we might all be too busy trying to find someone to EAT rather than checking through old mailing-lists...

50 years lifespan?

So if they can advertise that it will last 50 years, does that mean that this stuff was actually invented 50 years ago, and they are just releasing it now? Will they back up this claim with a 50 year warrenty?

50, eh?

weren't CDs supposed to last for up to a hundred years?

Regardless, this stuff is awesome. I want the XBox 720/PS4/Wii2 to have it. No complaining about lack of storage space then...

Re: 50, eh?

CDs last for thousands of years... maybe not the data inside but... that's another issue...

A CD-R is often dead within 5 years

Or if you leave it in the sunshine, it's dead in a couple of days.

A pressed CD has a much longer lifespan as it's not based on phase-changing dyes but actual physical holes in aluminium foil.

Want One!

I hope all those movie studios are watching - complete film series (Die Hard, for example) on a single disc.

The Americian TV industry has been using Tapestry for a while now, because it's the best medium for recording in Widescreen HD formats.

All those IT Admins wanting to back up all those "My Docs" folders that clients so kindly fill up with their iTunes music - easy with Tapestry.

This medium is soooo cool. Have to write a very nice note to Santa this year!

BluRay is dead!

Long live Tapestry!

Moore's less

I would buy 500GB hard disks now. Well before there is a risk that the disks become unreadable, I could replace them with something half the cost. Repeat until 50 years pass, and the total will still cost less than holographic media, plus I do not have to pay $18,000,000 for a reader in fifty year's time.

About CDs and DVDs

Actually you could make CDs and DVDs last virtually forever. You do have some flexibility with the standard so theoretically you could do something like a diamond CD which lasts millenia.

Something CD or DVD based would actually be a better candidate for such a system as, like many people noted, you probably won't get any devices that can still read those media after 50 years. It's much more likely that you will be able to read a CD as the backwards compatibility strings probably will last much longer. Even the newest HD-DVD drives still can read CD-Roms.

Maybe one could build some etching system for CDs where you have a glass or ceramic disk you etch your data out and seal it so it'll last for centuries.

I'm still pissed off holographic storage doesn't come in tiny cubes.

According to this guy hard drives, properly recorded (start from a blank, write to it once) hard drives last for at least 20-30 years. It'll be a lot longer if you "refresh" it, read then write back the data remagnetizing the platter. Even if the hard drive has trouble reading itself, data can be recovered with specialized but widespread hd data-recovery machines. Try doing that to a holographic disk. The biggest advantage of hard drives, besides speed and capacity, is that it'll be much easier to find a working SATA port than some niche holographic reader.

Besides, NUMBERS LIKE "50 years" etc ARE RETARDED. All storage devices use error-correction algorithms. If you want your data to stay around for 100 years, just tune the algorithm to have enough redundancy.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060804152111AAwj8jy

Hard Drive Life

I'm with Alex here. By migrating the data from RAID SAN to SAN in distributed locations over 50 years you're ensuring its integrity constantly - 300GB will be loose change by then and this will take no time and next to no effort. By contrast good luck finding a DVD player in 2058, let alone one of these specialised devices.

I do not get why anyone uses optical anymore. Having to physically change media to run a backup? Sooo last century.