Current mediums of storage all suffer from decay. Books rot, photographs fade, and even hard drives can become corrupt within the decade. But that may soon change.
Current mediums of storage all suffer from decay. Books rot, photographs fade, and even hard drives can become corrupt within the decade. But that may soon change.
Researchers at the University of Southampton have created a new data format that can store information in tiny nanostructures on a piece of glass. A glass disc approximately the size of a coin can store up to 360TB of data, and each glass disc has a lifespan of up to 13.8 billion years, in temperatures as high as 190°C. We’re looking at storage that records nearly a hundred times more data compared to external hard drives of our time, and keeping data so long that it’s three times the age of our Earth.
The scientists call this technology fi ve-dimensional (5D) digital data. Data is recorded via nanostructures created in fused quartz in three-dimensional positions, and two other dimensions: the size and orientation of said nanostructures. The researchers are now looking for companies to help bring this data storage technology to market.
