Hitachi presented a new technology for digital storage on Monday, using small quartz glass plates as the medium. These quartz plates show remarkable durability, and can withstand immersion in water, direct flames, exposure to most chemicals and even exposure to 1000 degrees Celsius for two hours without being damaged. Hitachi claims the information in the plates can be accessed for a few million years at least.
The data is stored in binary form by creating tiny dots inside the quartz glass plates, and can be read by any optical microscope. The current prototype is 2 centimeters square and about two millimeters thick. At the present time it only has four layers of data, and contains about the same density of information as a cd, but more layers can be added with no issues according to Hitachi.
The primary customers for this type of storage will almost certainly be archives and governments, though businesses with long term data storage concerns may also be interested. Information in digital formats is expanding at an incredible rate, and yet most of it is stored in ways that will not last a century, and there is a danger of losing most of it unless we can find better storage formats. This new one from Hitachi certainly has promise.
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