New data storage method can fit 360TB of data onto a quartz disk for 14 billion years

Researchers at Southampton Univerity (UK) have devised a new technique to digitally store data; a LOT of data, around 360 terabytes of it. And that storage option is permanent.

The breakthrough from the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) directs ultrafast laser pulses at a quartz disk to write data within it's 3D structure. Three layers of dots are written in, each just five microns away from the other. They've also developed a read process that involves hitting the disk with another pulse of light and recording its polarisation once it's passed through.

To cut to the chase, the ORC's method will let you store up to 360TB of data on a single disk about the size of your spectacle lens, for 13.8 billion years (at room temperature). To test the method, the team wrote a number of monumental literary works to quartz disks, including the King James Bible, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s Opticks, and the Magna Carta.

The "Superman memory crystals" as the researchers are calling the written disks are a major step in digital storage, especially in an age where, despite access to cloud options, a lot of users prefer to keep back up copies of data on disk. Not to mention, as Professor Peter Kazansky, from the ORC, says “It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”