In the early 2000s, a Bell Labs spin-out aimed to shake up the storage industry with the development of powerful new holographic devices.
Holographic storage, which has since drawn the attention of a host of big tech companies, including Microsoft, could’ve potentially offered huge data storage gains compared to traditional methods.
Having spun out from Bell Labs in 2000, Colorado-based InPhase Technologies looked to blaze a trail in this emerging domain, promising multi-terabyte storage devices that, if marketing materials were taken at face value, would’ve blown competition out the water.
Backed by a sizable investment, InPhase was working on a tight schedule. Years’ worth of development eventually culminated in the launch of Tapestry 300r, which offered users a whopping 300GB of storage capacity and boasting read/write transfer rates of 20 MB/s.
Ultimately, development of holographic storage devices proved costly and laborious. Reports from The Register in 2010, citing sources at the company, detailed an array of production challenges as well as “unrealistic product development timescales”.
“Our correspondent from the trenches said: ‘Over the two years I was there, we mostly had problems with sensitivity of materials. By that I mean that motors weren’t as precise as they needed to be or we didn’t have fine enough control over the laser’.”
Holographic storage renaissance
While InPhase’s story ended abruptly in late 2011, holographic storage is still a point of focus for a range of big tech companies and researchers. In 2020, for example, Microsoft unveiled the launch of a research group specifically focused on driving advances in holographic storage.
The initiative, dubbed Project HSD (Holographic Storage Device), aimed to explore how the technology could be used to address key challenges associated with traditional cloud storage mediums, including low data density and poor access rates.
As we reported in July 2025, the holographic storage space is also giving rise to a booming startup ecosystem, with UK-based HoloMem developing a holographic system to replace LTO tape.
Founded by Charlie Gale, a former Dyson engineer, HoloMem;s technology uses polymer ribbon cartridges with cheap, $5 laser diodes. The company claims each cartridge could offer users up to 200TB capacity.
The aim here, of course, is to supplant LTO tape. However, the firm is developing its solution to match LTO dimensions, meaning it can be easily integrated within existing tape libraries and removing the need for a costly overhaul.
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