Optware Holographic Versatile Card: 30GB on a credit card

Optware, maker of the 1TB Holographic Versatile Disc, introduces yet another high capacity storage system based on the same technology — the Holographic Versatile Card. These little credit card-sized bastages are likely to sport 30GB with a write speed 3 times faster than Blu Ray. Looking to release near the end of 2006 (when the technology is hopefully standardized), the cards will sell for less than $1 while the drives will go for closer to $2,000 — chill now, the price will surely drop with a little push from the invisible hand.

[Malfoy Roark @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

LOL, invisible hand. Someone paid attention in econ. Nice. :)

[Malfoy Roark @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Oh yea and to keep on topic, I'd pay 2k for the TB disc drive and even possibly 100 a disc. But not 2k for a drive that only writes to 30 gb cards. I only go big :).

[jg @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

blu-ray hd-dvd debate is over. my only question is they don't seem like they have much real estate to put movie art on these.

[PeteC @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

That idea sounds pretty good, should be able to use them in portable media devices, ableit maybe smaller versions of them and could keep loads of info in your wallet as long as their fairly duarble.

[yuppicide @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I wouldn't pay $2000 for this drive either. My questions would be:

1 - How fast does the drive write 1TB of information let alone 30GB?

2 - How long does the media last?

I think I'm going get a DVD-DL drive first. I bought this CD/DVD tower that will hold 75 of them. It comes with software that will catalog all of the contents of each CD or DVD and you can give it a title. When you want to find something you just open the search software and it pops out what you want. If you loan it to a friend it'll remind you in a few days to get it back. You can also daisychain up 128 of them to get because it's USB.

I want to compact my CD's onto DVD's to save space.

[yuppicide @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I don't see how the media will be so cheap, tho. I think that's unlikely. They always tell us things will be cheaper and they end up being more in the beginning.

[Agulator @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

We're heading straight for a Star Trek future.. if you were to spray paint that card in solid orange Krylon you'd have one of those 'tapes' that they used to carry around in the Original Series!

[brent brooks @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This makes me giddy, it is totally a star trek device, with those little pieces of plastic they carried around.

[hesh @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This make me happy in pants.

[John @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Capitalism - yea!

Hmmm. I just hope these things are stable. And scratch resistant/error checked/redundant.

What I worry about is when we get to a point where the storage to space ratio is at a point where one scratch will wipe out 5 years worth of work : ) Of course one needs to make multiple backups of original files, but still...

[Darren Cornwell @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This is fantastic, I want one now, now, now goddamit!

[VVV @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This is actually a piece of tape sticked to a piece of plastic....I now understand the price...

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

How durable is holographic technology of this ilk ? Is it suceptable to sun and scraches like current optical media ?

Not a slam against it, I'm just curious...

Oh yeah, what's it's power consumption like ? Logic would suggest it's much more efficient cause it looks like it doesn't have to physicaly spin. Anyone ?

[Geun Lee @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

What is stopping them to go a step further and releasing hard drives that use holographic material? I'm sure you could fit a Terabyte in there somewhere.

I don't know how difficult it would be to do this, but make it interface the same way to the computer. I think this would be really cool.

[vance @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This deserves to succeed if only for the fact that it is not the same boring ol' disc-shaped thing.

[Rocket Punch @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Now, this will make Yu Gi Oh the card game FUN!

[Adrian @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Nice Adam Smith reference! Booyah!

[The Jeremy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This reminds me of the "Hi-light" memory card that was touted in Popular Science around 1989. Never heard of it? There you go.

[Bryan @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

OK, I'm impressed. A terabyte on a CD? Yeehaw!

But the real question: how fast is it? More and more capacity is appearing on the market and that's great, but it still takes forever to move all that data around (copy 200 gigs from one HD to another *in the same computer* and you see what I'm getting at).

Capacity is everywhere. Someone needs to start working harder on the speed problem.

[yuppicide @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

OMG! They've hired McGyver! He's got a pencil and a stick of chewing gum and he somehow managed to burn 1TB of information on the tip of the pencil with a pack of matches!

[Wow @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

"Optware has also used their "collinear holographic technique"* on their Holographic Versatile Discs, which can store a terabyte (1024 gigabytes) of data at a transfer speed of a gigabyte per second."

That's pretty damn impressive...a gig per second...can you imagine the PSP with one of these bad boys in it? Perfect all-in-one portable device...

[John @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

How easy (or not) is it to burn data into this thing? CDs and DVDs get the aluminun layer speed stamped with pits. How do you mass burn laser interefernce patterns? Is it essentially like printing pictures the old way, with an optical enlarger?

[kevin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

tubrografix 16!

[Adam @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

What size drive is that in the picture? If that's a 3.5" bay... wow that's small...

[~J~ @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Gosh!

Well I don't mind admitting I didn't even know technology had reached this far yet and I thought I kept uptodate with things!!!

I'm bloody impressed, might get me one of those!!

[vidGuy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Too bad there is no true invisible hand. Just look at any failed electronics technology to know that.

I'd pay up to $5 a card but the drive needs to be less than $400. And as mentioned above, SPEED! Keep it getting faster. Don't know, could future increases in speed be delivered by firmware upgrades?

[Orin @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Hee. Deus ex machina.

[hesh @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

#5, read #22. Either way, how often are you going to have to write 1TB of data in one sitting? It's a valid question, but a bit ridiculous. Most people aren't going to have half a TB of total drive space.

There are some valid questions though about the shelf life of the cards and how susceptible they are to the elements.

[hesh @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Crap, I meant #5, read #27.

[leo @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

ref: star trek.... forget the orange tapes, what about tng? practically looks like isolinear control chips. don't remember what the storage cap. was on those though.

[3rdsun @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Blu ray & HD DVD must be shaking in there boots, not even out yet and another format comes along with many times their capacity with no sweat. Now if only it had a helping hand to get off the ground. seems like the giants might put david out of his existence.

[david repp @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I wonder what moving parts are required? Does the card spin or does something in the drive move? Will this be a replacement for flash drives?

[TC @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

I've noticed there's no mention of how often you can re-record data, if at all? I'm not sure if I would buy one if there is only dispensation for write-once media, but hopefully this isn't the case.

[MrFloppy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Looks very good.
I think I prefer this to be the next step in media format, rather than the DVDesque Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

At least, this is something NEW.
But maybe the end of 2006 will be too late, with BR and HD-DVD in the market.

[MrFloppy @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Is this the same technology/company?

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

http://xataka.com/archivos/2005/04/20-el-almacenamiento-holografico.php

http://xataka.com/archivos/2005/04/15-primera-demostracion-de-una-u.php

[me� obviously @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

#31/leo

with a bit of googling, it turns out those things hold 2.15 kiloquads, i assume a quad is to a terabyte as a terabyte is to a bit. or something outlandish like that.

yes those questions need to be answered. those questions being:
-how does holographic media hold up to environmental conditions?
-how many times can these be rewritten? (is the cheapness of the card a clue?)

[Joe Futura @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

We can learn further from the company's FAQ
http://www.optware.co.jp/english/index_faq.htm

it will initially be write-once
based on green laser

doesn't explicitly discuss durability, but maybe those who know about the materials' side of things could comment on their methodology

[Mike @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

This is crazy. I'd definately buy this thing, but they'd have to lower the drive price to about 1k... then it would be a lot more reasonable...

maybe they'll make those cards with 100GB of data.... nice :)

[Chris the unwise @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

*31 & 32, how often are we going to use 640K? That should be enough for just about anybody!

[ravi @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

i dont think this will hold the ground...dvd will always hold standards until hd-dvd hits and then bluray...just like even today cds are still used...even though we have dvd on sale for free...yea for ppl who do video work its usefull...but for average consumers...its no use. yea this looks exciting but think logically...why would u pay 2000 for a drive vs 50(now) for a dvd burner...even free dvd-+rw drives after mir sometimes...dvds cost bout 10 cents where this card will be $1 as they say...so compare saving about $1950 to jsut carry 6 dvds around with u...even tho ipod and small flash mp3 players are out there...does not mean cd players are not selling...this product will practally fail

[plusH @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

kool stuff....i hope the drive gets much much cheaper then $2ooo...or i soon get a super duper job.....so i dont mind spending $2ooo.......
...

where is the invisible hand..? :S

[Xad @ Dec 19th 2005 2:05AM]

Its nice to see something different from the typical big round discs. 1TB on the original discs is a lot of space, but that allows for smaller devices to be created with the same technology but with less space (even less would be gigs and gigs in this situation).

If the technology works well and is stable, then i wouldn't be surprised if the technology itself becomes very popular.

I would love to see technology go from standard CD/DVDs to small/durable cards that you can transport easily, write to and re-write to quickly etc.