by Isaiah Beard on Apr.29, 2009, under Emerging Technology
An interesting tidbit from General Electric may possibly breathe new life into removable-disc storage, with their just-announced holographic technology:
NISKAYUNA, N.Y., Apr 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — GE | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating — GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), today announced a major breakthrough in the development of next generation optical storage technology. GE researchers have successfully demonstrated a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc. This is equal to the capacity of 20 single-layer Blu-ray discs, 100 DVDs or the hard drive for a large desktop computer.
Impressive storage for a CD form factor. However, as other technology sites are pointing out, cramming more data into a CD-sized disc doesn’t mean that the general public is going to automatically adopt it. Currently, several factors are conspiring against this type of removable media: