Microsoft Research Stores 4.8TB in Glass for 10,000 Years, Targeting Archival Data
Updated
Updated · Neowin · Jul 17
Microsoft Research Stores 4.8TB in Glass for 10,000 Years, Targeting Archival Data
1 articles · Updated · Neowin · Jul 17
Summary
A palm-sized 120x120x2mm sheet of borosilicate glass held 4.8 terabytes in Microsoft Research's Silica demo, with accelerated ageing tests indicating the data would remain readable for more than 10,000 years.
Silica tackles digital archiving's durability problem by replacing tapes and hard drives that degrade over time with laser-written voxels embedded across 301 layers inside ordinary glass.
The Nature study says the advance is not a new storage principle but a full archival system—covering encoding, writing, reading, decoding and error correction—built with cheaper, easier-to-source borosilicate instead of fused silica.
Writing speeds reached 65.9 megabits per second in one lower-density mode and 25.6 megabits per second per laser beam overall, while a simplified one-camera reader and redesigned writer cut hardware complexity.
Governments, research institutions, businesses and cultural groups are seeking longer-lived digital preservation, and the researchers argue glass could become a practical medium for records meant to survive generations.
When will this 'immortal' glass storage become affordable enough to replace today’s costly and short-lived data archives?
How will future civilizations read data on glass when the necessary technology becomes ancient history itself?
With the power to create permanent records, who decides which parts of our history are saved from being forgotten?
Project Silica: Microsoft’s Glass Storage Breakthrough Promises 10,000-Year Digital Data Preservation
Overview
Microsoft Research announced Project Silica in 2024 to address the urgent need for preserving digital heritage over exceptionally long periods. Traditional storage methods like magnetic tape and hard drives degrade quickly, use a lot of energy, and are vulnerable to environmental damage, making them unsuitable for millennia-scale preservation. Project Silica offers a robust alternative by storing data in durable borosilicate glass, which provides extreme longevity and resilience. This innovative approach moves beyond the limitations of current media, marking a necessary paradigm shift in how we safeguard valuable digital information for future generations.