Yet Another Disc Format?

How much data can you cram onto a CD/DVD sized optical disc? Well, we know CDs manage around 800Mb, DVDs can ramp that up to around 20Gb using both sides and multiple layers, and a two-sided Blu Ray disc manages around 50Gb, but that’s small beer, compared with the new General Electric Holographic Versatile Disc (ugh!) or HVD.

Instead of the reflective pits used on conventional optical discs this uses a ‘microholographic’ process to store data, raising the bar to an impressive 500Gb per disc, enough to store more than 100 DVD movies. Don’t get too excited, it’s still in the lab and some way from being a commercial product but things can move very quickly in this business, once the numbers start to add up for the bean-counters, so keep your eye on this one. Who knows, one day soon you’ll have to replace your record and video collection all over again, but the good news is that this time it won’t take up anything like as much space…