Holographic storage puts 100 DVDs on a single disc

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs. The storage technique, which G.E. is detailing next Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices. The holographic process consists of data encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive material.

Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known. The first research papers were published in the early 1960s.

See New York Times.