GE breakthrough in micro-holographic data storage

GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Company, announced a next generation optical storage technology. GE’s research team has demonstrated a micro-holographic material that can support data recording at the same speed as Blu-ray discs. This result builds upon the April 2009 demonstration of a threshold micro-holographic storage material that can support 500 gigabytes of storage capacity in a standard DVD-size disc.

See the original article at:

http://ge.geglobalresearch.com/blog/breakthrough-in-micro-holographic-data-storage

It is also reported on StorageNewsletter, see:

http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/optical/ge-micro-holographic

DISC Comment:

This demonstrates the continued development of optical storage, with Blu-ray starting at 25GB and now at 100GB with the latest BDXL release. This announcement of 500GB is one step toward GE’s aim of achieving 1TB on a single 120mm disc. It shows a continued roadmap for optical storage and it is very important that they have recognised the need to maintain the backward compatibility with CD/DVD and Bluray. Indeed optical is the only storage technology were future developments are considering how to read 20+ year old technology. You only have to look at LTO tape, where they only provide read back compatibility with the previous two versions. So LTO5 can’t read LTO2 which was released 7 years earlier.

This shows the true value of optical as a long term secure archive.