InPhase Technologies has finally brought its holographic storage drives and media to the market with the shipping of 300GB holographic storage disks and its Tapestry HDS-300R. The HVD drive costs $18,000 and each disk costs $180. The disks are write-once only (like WORM media), which means that they are clearly targeted at archival for large corporations.
A few of its customers include Turner Broadcasting, the US Geological Survey and Lockheed Martin.
InPhase expects to have a rewritable version out in 2008, followed by capacity improvements expecting to reach 1.6TB in 2010. The disk operates at 20MBps and features a 50-year archival life. The drive can emulate as DVD, CD-R, magnetic optical or as a tape drive to allow better integration with existing software.
While a rewritable version may look like a good replacement for Tape as backup, InPhase has made it clear that they are not interested in the backup market, but instead are focusing on data archival.
