The increase of the capacity for data storage devices is the main purpose for many companies. There are some interesting achievements in this area, which can be treated as a great step forward in this branch of the hardware industry.
The holographic storage provides new opportunities for the high capacity of devices. The Optware Company, which is a leading developer of the holographic storages, is planning to provide an optical data storage, the Holographic Versatile Card, at the end of 2006. The technical parameters of the holographic storage are rather high and interesting. The expected capacity of the memory card is 30 GB and the price is about nine dollars. The Optware Company also plans to provide the HVC reading and recording devices. Their prices are quite high: one thousand, eight hundred and twenty and nine thousand and ninety dollars by preliminary evaluations.
Technology of the holographic storage development is expected to be the standard of the information and communication technologies, Ecma International. The parameters of the holographic storage appeared very compact, taking into consideration the high capacity of the device. The size of the holographic storage card is as small as a simple credit card. The sizes of the devices for work with the card are similar to the external hard disk. These parameters of the holographic data storages are very compact and the users will appreciate it. The Optware Company uses an original collinear holographic technology, which requires only one object line, since one laser beam at the same axe that is used for reading and writing as well, combines the information and basic beam.
The HVC implies different directions for reading and writing the data. There is a perfect reading system of the holographic data storage, which moves the card and optical header in horizontal direction for the choice of the responding holograms. The holographic data storage can record the data in two directions. The technology of the optical data utilizes the full volume of the device, not only its surface. High capacity of the holographic storage is the subject for further investigations of Optware and some other companies, which are working efficiently in this direction.
The holographic disks are to become an efficient replacement for popular DVD disks. The only problem is the expected high price for the reading and writing devices. During the first months after the appearance of this technology at the market of data storages, this high price may grow into a lower. Testing of the new holographic storage provided an interesting result, which could be of great importance for the start point of further investigations. The optimization of the capacity, size and price is one of the main purposes for the developers of this device. New models of the holographic storages must be an extreme change in the whole process of the digital data storing. A continued work for the optimization of the holographic memory usage will be a tendency of the new age in the digital technologies development