Hitachi is showing off a storage system using quartz glass that it claims will retain data for hundred of millions of years.
Company researchers displayed the storage unit, consisting of a sliver of glass 2cm square and 2mm thick, which can hold 40MB of data per square inch, about the same as a standard CD. The data is written in binary format by lasering dots on the glass in four layers, but the researchers say adding more layers to increase storage density isn’t a problem.
The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven’t necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones,
Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii told AFP. The possibility of losing information may actually have increased,
he said, pointing out that CDs and tape storage are predicted to last less than a few decades at best, and in many cases fail within years — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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