hVault, a provider of holographic digital data storage solutions, today announced the launch of their company at NAB 2012. hVault’s focus is a holographic disk storage system for archival applications, including both single drive autoloaders and multi-drive libraries. The company claims that the systems will offer lower cost of ownership than either hard disk or data tape storage. Archival life of the hVault tamper-proof disks exceeds 50 years.

"The vastly expanding storage needs of the professional video industry have dictated migrating to a secure, long-life format, and holographic storage is the benchmark for archival video storage," said Bland McCartha, vice president of sales for hVault. "The characteristics of our library systems will enable companies who have already digitized their content, as well as the vast collections of analog video that still require digitization, to safely store their content and provide rapid access for monetization of that archival content. There is no other technology that comes close to the benefits of holographic storage for active archive applications."

Holographic storage is more cost effective than magnetic storage, either disk-based or tape-based. Holographic media has an archival lifetime in excess of 50 years, which eliminates the 2-5 year cycle of replacing magnetic media. Holographic storage systems consume about 1/100th the power of equivalent disk storage and can operate without any special power conditioning or cooling. Holographic media is also impervious to magnetic fields, static electricity, extremes of temperature and humidity, atmospheric dust or water damage.