[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]harddrives, no matter how convent, will always be a crappy storage medium, due to cost, size, and data being destroyed easily. where as any optical disc could get down to the 1$ range, and under easily. if i wanted to do a full system backup, i would get 2 harddrives, and than dvds/blu rays for the most important data, because its cheaper. these holo discs, once the tech gets out there for the pc, will probably cost at most 10$ a disc, show my the 500gb hdd or ssd that is 10$. the drive itself will cost close to a grand at launch, and slowly get down the the 2-400$ range, and will pay for itself after 15 discs are burned.[/citation]
My personal experience tells a different story. For me, hard drives are way more reliable than any optical medium I had my data stored in, and hard drive's read and access speeds are much higher and they're also easily rewritable and not prone to losing as an optical disc. That said, holo discs will have a place in this world in the form of lossless video and audio for better movie playbacks and some mission-critical backups for some, but comparing those to hard drives is apples and oranges.