Microsoft says its glass-based storage project now works with 'the same material found in kitchen cookware and oven doors' and can hold data for 10,000 years
Long-term data storage is a tricky one. As I look at my personal hard drives, full of photos, screenshots, and ancient drafts of teenage poetry I hope never see the light of day, I can't help but wonder how long I really have until I encounter the dread spectre of disk failure.
SSDs may sound like the obvious solution, but have you seen SSD prices lately? Besides, even storage giant SanDisk says, "most SSDs will last anywhere from 5 to 10 years." That's hardly archival-quality. However, a fresh study from Microsoft has found an unlikely medium that can potentially store high-density data for up to 10,000 years—namely, laser-etched glass.
Now, obviously, the claim that etching glass with femtosecond laser pulses actually achieves data storage for 10,000 years is not really provable. Additionally, this isn't even the first time Microsoft has explored glass-based data storage. The real headline here is that the research team has made glass-based storage way less expensive—and therefore way more likely to become a widespread reality.
According to a blog post from partner research manager Richard Black, the new Project Silica technique "stores hundreds of layers of data in glass only 2 mm thin, as with previous methods, but with important improvements." Firstly, the project has shifted away from using "expensive fused silica to ordinary borosilicate glass found in kitchen cookware." That's right: the future of long-term data storage might actually be Pyrex.
That's not the only way Project Silica manages to keep costs down, though. "The reader for the glass now needs only one camera, not three or four, reducing cost and size," Black goes on to write, "In addition, the writing devices require fewer parts, making them easier to manufacture and calibrate, and enabling them to encode data more quickly."
It's a properly sci-fi development that, unlike much of real-world AI, genuinely inspires. Just picture it: museums of glass, translucent server rooms, and libraries full of gently twinkling tomes.
Anyway, I'll stop pitching my debut novel for a beat—the future of Project Silica is not a done deal, either. The research phase has concluded, but there's no guarantee you'll ever hold something like an SSD with thin glass innards in your hands. All Black says of the future is: "We are continuing to consider learnings from Project Silica as we explore the ongoing need for sustainable, long-term preservation of digital information."