Data stored in quartz crystal may last 100 million years

[LongTomH]

Japan's Hitachi corporation has unveiled a new method of storing data on quartz crystals, producing a data storage that may last 100 million years. The new system encodes data in binary form on thin sheets of quartz glass.

"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 said. "The possibility of losing information may actually have increased," he said, noting the life of digital media currently available—CDs and hard drives—is limited to a few decades or a century at most. And the rapid development of technologies has resulted in frequent changes of data-reading hardware. "As you must have experienced, there is the problem that you cannot retrieve information and data you managed to collect," said Torii, apparently referring to now-obsolete record players and cine films.

............//snip

Hitachi have not decided when to put the chip to practical use but researchers said they could start with storage services for government agencies, museums and religious organizations.

[winter is coming]

1. Woohoo, we can save LOLcats for posterity!

Seriously, are we going to get to the point where everyone has a memory device assigned/implanted at birth, and you just keeping adding stuff to it for the rest of your life?

[jsr]

2. Assuming there will be hardware and software to read it

[LongTomH]

5. Read the article!

The data is stored in binary, which is likely to be around for a very, very long time. It may be re-invented a few time.

[Confusious]

3. I want one

Well, the reader and writer.

I'm going to need a shitload of chips though.

[sakabatou]

4. One thing: how easy are those thing able to break?

[LongTomH]

6. I would assume they're at least as durable as a DVD or CD-rom

nfm

[progressoid]

7. I'll take two

Just in case the first one breaks.