Equipped with a new laser writing technique called 5D, this CD-sized glass disc could hold up to 500TB of data and last nearly 14 billion years.
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[EN VIDÉO] 3 unusual ways to store digital data To store files, music, or videos, most of us use a DVD or hard drive. But researchers have developed sometimes surprising alternative methods.
We remember the famous optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, …) and their duration very optimistic life when they were released. Faced with the test of time, reality shows that data retention on these media is quite random. This is why the labs are looking for solutions to keep important volumes data for as long as possible. Different techniques have been considered, by combining the dimensions to increase the density.
The one imagined by the researchers ofUniversity of Southampton in the UK could burn onto a single CD-sized glass disc, 500 terabytes of data. A density 10,000 times denser than what can be offered by Blu-Ray. This capacity could be used to store the equivalent of 125,000,000 photos. That’s not all, since the storage medium would be durable, even eternal. It could withstand temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees, but above all its longevity would be 13.8 billion years without degradation, if stored in good conditions.
Slow but durable
To achieve these feats and increase the density as much, the laboratory has relied on the writing of storage cells based on nanostructures. The team talks about structures written in laser in five dimensions (5D). There are thus two optical dimensions and three other spatial ones. For their test, the scientists used this method to record 6 GB of data in a glass sample of silica an inch. The downside is that, side speed writing, the laser peaks at 230 kb / s. This is not fast but since it is long term storage, the speed of gravure is not necessarily a priority. It would take about 60 days to save this 500 TB of data. That said, the team is now working on increasing this speed.
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