If the problem of SPE rests in bits that interfere with each other's orientations, why not divide and conquer them? The patterned media solution theorizes that bits won't be corrupted if barriers are placed between them. These barriers have been dubbed "mesas and valleys," with each raised mesa containing one bit of information. The theory also postulates that patterned media could further increase memory efficiency. Each bit could occupy only one grain of magnetic material, as opposed to the 500 to 1,000 grains that bits currently occupy. Of course, such radical changes to the surface of the platter would necessitate corresponding changes to the design of read-write heads. For this reason, researches don't expect to make commercially viable breakthroughs in patterned media for a few years yet.

Holographic storage represents a revolutionary shift from magnetic technologies. While it is not yet remotely close to practicable, the promise of higher storage capacities and speeds continues to fuel research in this area. Holographic processes would enable computers to store the contents of entire libraries on single disks the size of your fingertip. How is this possible? Holographic laser beams are fast, and immune to inertia. This means they can access information at fractions of the conventional, magnetic speed. Roughly speaking, the technology works with two laser beams that shine through each other. These cross-lasers create a particular pattern that is then recorded by a photosensitive material. To retrieve this information, only one of the original beams is needed to shine through the recorded pattern and automatically reproduce the second original beam. And hey presto! within that second original beam resides the original recorded data. It's like data retrieval without any actually retrieval, since the system relies on optical comparisons of information (rather than data that's stored in different addresses and requires separate access for each comparison). At the moment, research seems to be branching into two distinct areas of this field: development of high-capacity holographic systems, and development of super-fast holographic systems. And you can bet your bottom dollar there's a market for both.