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Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years

Posted by timothy on from the is-data-data-when-no-one's-left-to-read-it? dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Digital storage devices have become ubiquitous in our lives but the move to digital storage has raised concerns about the lifetime of the storage media. Now Alex Zettl and his group at the University of California, Berkeley report that they have developed an experimental memory device consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle enclosed in a multiwalled carbon nanotube that could have a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years. The nanoparticle can be moved through the nanotube by applying a low voltage, writing the device to a binary state represented by the position of the nanoparticle. The state of the device can then be subsequently read by a simple resistance measurement while reversing the nanoparticle's motion allows a memory 'bit' to be rewritten. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware storing data at a high density with a very long lifetime. Details of the process are available at the American Chemical Society for $30."

6 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Main problem by synthparadox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The main problem isn't the length of time that data can be stored. Hard drives and tape drives still carry data from the 1970s, but no one can use them. Why? Because of format changes. We recently transitioned to Blu-Ray, and there are countless codecs for video at this point in time. I don't think the problem is with the length of time for storage, as useful as that is, but rather with the format in which we store them.

    An excellent anecdote was mentioned on slashdot recently: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/13/005224

    1. Re:Main problem by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unsolicited advice: If you aren't going to do the work, don't second guess the tech doing the work. Likely you are right. However, say something does go wrong with the drive... now you are the one who takes the blame. Best to go "uh huh... yea... sounds good" and leave it like that.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  2. Seriously? by whisper_jeff · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, while I find the tech cool and this is certainly News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters but, seriously? "Details of the process are available at the American Chemical Society for $30." Seriously? We're just abandoning any pretense that these are news summaries now and just outright turning them into ads for products? We're now outright trying to sell things? Weak. Very weak indeed.

  3. In 1 billion years... by Eddy+Luten · · Score: 5, Insightful

    nobody will give a damn about our data anyway.

  4. Re:A billion years? by pipatron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    See, this is not a problem. Unless society is cast back into darkness by some nuclear war, the future human/creature will easily understand how to power up and interface to this device. Either by locating historical documentation, or reverse engineering, which would be trivial for our future superhumans/robots.

    --
    c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
  5. Re:A billion years? by harryandthehenderson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The papyrus medium developed by the Egyptians are still readable today

    Only if they were stored under conditions conducive to them not rotting away which was the fate of most papyrus.

    compared to DVD-RWs that can hold a few GBs of data, but only has a shelf life of a few years.

    Stop buying cheap DVD-RWs and you don't have that problem.