A UK-based SME has built a prototype data storage device that uses micro-holograms inside recyclable plastic discs, requiring no active cooling to operate. Most digital data today lives in vast warehouses where magnetic tape and hard drives consume enormous amounts of electricity, largely to run air-conditioning that keeps the hardware from overheating. As internet use, AI, and medical record-keeping expand, these legacy systems cannot scale without straining energy grids and undermining emissions targets. HoloMem’s ‘HoloDrive’ replaces magnetic and solid-state media with photopolymer material that stores data as holograms, eliminating the need for energy-intensive cooling and reducing reliance on rare-earth minerals. If the device passes final operational testing and enters the market, data centres could expand storage capacity without proportional increases in energy use or carbon emissions. The technology offers a practical route for governments and businesses to meet growing data demands while pursuing net-zero targets—a shift in infrastructure that most internet users will never see but that quietly determines whether digital growth remains compatible with climate goals.
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UK-based SME, HoloMem, has developed a pioneering, low-cost and more sustainable holographic data storage (HDS) solution allowing data-centres to expand and meet exponential data storage capacity growth across the global datasphere. The ~5.44bn people using the internet across the globe generate ~2,500 Petabytes(PB) of data/day. By 2025, 181 Zettabytes(ZB) (181m PB) of data (annually) will require storage. That figure is projected to increase 33x, rising to ~2,142ZB by 2035\. Compounding this issue, businesses are buying up data space for back-up data, hospitals need greater capacity to store records, the increased application of AI requires vast amounts of easy-to-access data, and governments seek solutions that enable them to create economic conditions for data-centre market growth alongside Net Zero targets \[BBC,2024\]. Most digital data is stored within vast data warehouses that need to deliver rapid read/write capabilities. Entrenched legacy solutions, such as linear-open-tape (LTOv9), hard disk drives (HDD), and solid-state drives (SDD), are energy-intensive, costly to maintain, and are expensive and resource intensive at scale. ~40% of data-centre running costs are attributed to air-conditioning stabilised thermal environments \[ITPro,2022\] and current energy-intensive solutions don't have the capacity to scale without significant energy infrastructure development. More widely, by 2030, existing data-centres will undermine global emission reduction targets, forming ~8% of total global greenhouse emissions \[International-Energy-Agency,2023\]. 'HoloDrive' uses micro-holograms to store up to 1PB of data upon readily accessible, sustainable and recyclable photopolymer media - a marked shift away from resource-intensive magnetic tape and neodymium-iron-boron used in LTO/HDD/SDD solutions. In addition, HoloDrive requires no active operational cooling, and is a cost-effective, sustainable and high-density storage solution for near term data-centre market growth. This project finalises operational testing and technical adjustments, propelling HoloDrive into the active market, providing an economic and highly disruptive solution to address the issue of exponential datasphere growth.
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