The trouble with holograms, if I understand them correctly, is that when storing information in a phase structure, to change one small part of the information you are storing, the hologram must be adjusted everywhere. The bits are encoded in a way that’s a bit nonlocal. I think a reasonable analogy is how small changes to a structure affect its Fourier transform. The whole thing leaps in Fourier space for a little wiggle in direct space. I foresee that being troublesome for write operations.
EvanAnderson · 22m ago
I am reminded of the story from the early 2000's about researchers who were storing data on sticky tape. This came up on HN a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040009
duskwuff · 7h ago
1) What on earth do they mean by "zero energy storage"? Magnetic tape doesn't consume energy at idle either. Hell, even hard disks can be powered down.
2) "Also, the optical-based new tech’s touted 50-year life is 10x the life of magnetic tape." Say what? Most magnetic tape is rated for up to 30 years in storage. You might only get a few years out of a tape if you're writing to it frequently... but this new format is write-once, so it's not even in the running.
3) People have made wild claims about holographic data storage being the Next Big Thing since the 1980s - in particular, there was a whole wave of them in the late 2000s claiming to have a DVD replacement under development. None of them have brought products to market. I'm not confident this one's going to be any different.
altairprime · 28m ago
Magnetic tape depends on retained energy in the magnetic tape’s ferroparticles; burned-in polymer structures do not. Perhaps that’s what they meant?
JumpCrisscross · 6h ago
Guess: magnetic memory exists in a high state of potential energy. This facilitates its degradation. While, say, scratches in stone are lower potential energy?
duskwuff · 6h ago
That's a clever theory, but the company specifically described it as having "zero energy storage costs".
22c · 41m ago
Does it mean that they can be stored at room temperature, in humid conditions, etc? ie. requiring no HVAC/dehumidifiers or whatever else might be needed to reliably store archive media?
That's my charitable interpretation.
CoastalCoder · 7h ago
> What on earth do they mean by "zero energy storage"?
My guess is that someone from marketing came up with that bullet point, and the company's actual engineers are torn between eye-rolling and wanting to get very violent on the marketing person.
jug · 6h ago
I wish we had something better than "walk through multiple hard drives as a data nomad and remember to use them every now and then" as a cost-effective and consumer oriented method for cold storage. I don't even care for the speed. Tape is obnoxious with high up front investments, not even targeting private use, Blu-ray never really became a surefire way and there were too much uncertainty and variety depending on brand.
UltraSane · 17m ago
You can buy used older gen LTO drives for not too much money.
alienbaby · 4h ago
The lto10 info and stats are wrong? It's 30TB / 75Tb compressed. Read write many, and can hit speeds of 1GB/s ? I didn't read any info on the write and then read speeds of this holotape.
CoastalCoder · 7h ago
Anyone know the history of long-term reliance on proprietary technologies?
I.e., how often does it actually work out for the adopters?
Are their licensing / escrow schemes the meant to mitigate the risks from the original supplier going out of business? How often do those schemes pay off?
catwhatcat · 7h ago
What are the chances this becomes a desktop form-factor alike cd drives?
duskwuff · 7h ago
Zero. There's no market for consumer archival-only storage; magnetic tape has been an enterprise-only product for 20+ years. Even write-once formats are barely holding on; recordable Blu-Ray production ended earlier this year.
dehrmann · 5h ago
> recordable Blu-Ray production ended earlier this year
It looks like it's only Sony that's ending production?
duskwuff · 2h ago
You might be right. Either way, it's a signal.
allears · 7h ago
Sounds really good, but neither the article nor any information I could find on the company says anything about read/write speed compared to other options. I would think that would be a big factor when you're dealing with that much data.
2) "Also, the optical-based new tech’s touted 50-year life is 10x the life of magnetic tape." Say what? Most magnetic tape is rated for up to 30 years in storage. You might only get a few years out of a tape if you're writing to it frequently... but this new format is write-once, so it's not even in the running.
3) People have made wild claims about holographic data storage being the Next Big Thing since the 1980s - in particular, there was a whole wave of them in the late 2000s claiming to have a DVD replacement under development. None of them have brought products to market. I'm not confident this one's going to be any different.
That's my charitable interpretation.
My guess is that someone from marketing came up with that bullet point, and the company's actual engineers are torn between eye-rolling and wanting to get very violent on the marketing person.
I.e., how often does it actually work out for the adopters?
Are their licensing / escrow schemes the meant to mitigate the risks from the original supplier going out of business? How often do those schemes pay off?
It looks like it's only Sony that's ending production?
https://blocksandfiles.com/2025/07/12/holomems-drop-in-holog...