Japanese vendor Optware Corp., which this week is opening the U.S. branch of its holographic disk storage business, expects to ship three iterations of its high-density products by the end of 2006 -- and is aiming to break the 1TB capacity mark by 2008. Optware"s Magnum HVD drives will have up to 200GB of capacity when they"re released next year, according to Terry Loseke, president of Optware America in Longmont, Colo.

Optware is now neighbors with its only other U.S. competitor, InPhase Technologies Inc., which is also in Longmont. InPhase said earlier this year that it will begin shipping its own 200GB drive by the end of next year.

Holographic disks can attain far higher density of data storage than standard magnetic disk drives, which store data only on the surface of a disk. Holographic disk technology allows data to be stored as a holograph throughout the polymer material that makes up a disk.

Optware"s technology works by shining a green laser through the disk and then recording data in the polymer resin. A shiny surface on the bottom of the disk -- made of the same material a compact disc or DVD has on its surface -- then reflects that data back up to the laser to be read.

Loseke said Optware will be able to undercut InPhase"s pricing because the technology is less complicated and therefore less expensive to produce. "A disk can cost the same as a DVD," he said. "The cost per megabyte is orders of magnitude less than magnetic disk storage media. It"s about one-tenth of the cost of a hard drive."