I write about technology all of the time. I play with the technology, I'm fascinated by it, but when I sit down to write a long feature or a piece of a book, I'm not depending on my hard drive. I back it all up! Will I ever be comfortable not doing that? Doubtful. For that reason, I, and others more knowledgeable than I, believe optical discs will be used for storage at least until 2025, and probably beyond that.

Sonic senior VP and general manager Jim Taylor reminds me that although many of us have not seen a floppy disk in a long time, the format is still strong in many home markets where consumers have older computers. Then there is tape, whose long-rumored death has been strongly exaggerated. For professional storage, backup or archival, tape is still the most preferred and widespread solution. From a cost-per-gigabyte perspective, it remains very competitive, according to Understanding & Solutions (U & S) senior technology consultant Bill Foster. In 2010, U & S predicts computer tape will still acount for 3.4% of the revenue growth in the removable storage market. "The traditional storage industry is not standing still waiting for the holographics storage market to walk all over them," Foster says. "They are refining their storage systems. At one time, if you backed up an entire segment of an archive to a tape, you had to load that entire tape back onto the hard drive just to access one file." Foster says that now, with Quantum's tape technology you can retrieve a 10-second video clip from a one hour documentary without having to load the whole thing in. "I think we'll see even more R& D in that area," he predicts.

Of course, the dynamics of the optical storage market will change in the coming years. In terms of growth in blue laser formats, Foster notes that looking at habits rather than numbers is preferable when trying to understand unit shipments. When blue laser discs really become a format of choice, users will not need to buy as many of these discs to get the same storage space or even more than they did with DVDs because blue laser discs have a much higher capacity. "Most DVD recordables are single layer. Blu-ray is designed to be dual layer. You have 10X the capacity on today's Blu-ray discs than you have on a DVD. Blu-ray also has a roadmap to increase capacity beyond 50 gigabytes. Those discs may very well appear first in the professional space because consumer players on the market now will not play anything more than 50 gigabytes, but there is nothing to stop the professional storage market from putting in four-layer compatible drives."

A 50GB Blu-ray disc offers a lot of space for personal data—so much that, according to Taylor, we've reached the end of the road for optical disc-based consumer storage. On the industrial backup side, where storage needs increase as fast or faster than available capacity, regardless of the technology used, holographics is a likely successor.

Holographic technology has been around since the mid-1960s and its progress has been slow and steady, according to Foster. "It isn't yet delivering the kind of capacity promised, 800 gigabyte and 1.6 terabyte in write once. At the moment they are at about 300 gigabytes," Foster says, "which is not so vastly superior when comparing the cost to a bunch of Blu-ray discs, which are fine to satisfy the same needs." Which is one reason why he doubts holographic technology will supersede blue laser discs as a consumer storage medium.

As for whether we need holographic discs—or what will make them a must-have solution—Foster says, "It may be a question of the data we have today in a smaller format. It may not be a 5" disc with a terabyte on it, it might be a postage stamp with the same amount as a DVD. It doesn't have to be bigger, just more compact. Like flash memory having 4 gigs on an SD card."

In a nutshell? Andy Marken of marketing and public relations firm Marken Communications, has some very positive thoughts on optical disc storage overall. "CD technology will be with us for probably another 20 years because it costs practically nothing, plays virtually everywhere, and is quite sufficient for regular folks storing music, photos, short videos. DVD technology is reasonably priced now and will be even more so in a year. That gives 20+ minutes of HD content again plays almost anywhere. DVD, because of the low cost, will probably have a 20-25 year life run, at least. Keep in mind that this media can be played on all next-generation DVD players/recorders, so what do you have to lose? Based on experience, even when people move to the next-generation burners, they will then weigh their media usage on content/price. If you've got a little content, you'll use CD. For modest content, you'll use DVD and DVD DL. If you've got huge content, you'll move up."

Ultimately, will optical storage survive? Despite the fact that writing about its demise makes more interesting column and blog fodder, growth opportunities in the optical disc world remain, and like Marken, I believe all of the formats will survive. He says, "What will happen is that we'll choose our media based on cost—total cost—and archiving needs."

For a more in-depth look at the future of optical disc-based and other high-capacity storage media, contact U & S about their study, called "Removable Storage: A Roadmap For Growth."

Debbie Galante Block, an EMedialive contributing editor who has written for Billboard, One to One and other magazines, is a freelance writer based in Mahopac, New York.