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Hitachi Creates Quartz Glass Archival Medium

Posted by Unknown on from the hand-me-that-data-crystal dept.

guttentag writes "Hitachi has announced (original press release in Japanese, translated to English) a new storage medium that uses a laser to imprint dots on a piece of quartz glass that correspond to binary code. The dots can be read with an optical microscope and appropriate software. The company says this medium is resistant to extreme heat, radiation, radio waves and should still be readable after a few hundred million years. It's intended as an archival format with data density similar to a music CD (40MB per square inch with 4 layers)."

13 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. No better way by Sparticus789 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally, a long term solution so that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids can see my baby pictures, listen to my Fallout Boy CDs, and watch my disturbing pr0n collection. I'll order a dozen!

    --
    sudo make me a sandwich
    1. Re:No better way by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Funny

      Finally, a long term solution so that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids can see my baby pictures, listen to my Fallout Boy CDs, and watch my disturbing pr0n collection. I'll order a dozen!

      ***DRM ERROR - Could Not Contact Authentication Server***

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    2. Re:No better way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Finally, a long term solution so that my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids can see my baby pictures, listen to my Fallout Boy CDs, and watch my disturbing pr0n collection. I'll order a dozen!

      ***DRM ERROR - Could Not Contact Authentication Server***

      That makes me a sad panda.

  2. The first thing to record by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dear Hitachi,

    please record the video "Never Gonna Give You Up", so that all future generations are able to get rick-rolled. And label the disc "soft porn" to ensure they'll work at decoding the data.

    1. Re:The first thing to record by EkriirkE · · Score: 4, Funny

      Careful, what people consider sexual varies culture to culture - you're going to start a future where everyone masturbates to the video.

      --
      from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
      to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
    2. Re:The first thing to record by modecx · · Score: 3, Funny

      You mean to tell me nobody else does that now?

      --
      Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
  3. Long term data archival by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem with long term data archival isn't just the storage medium -- it's being able to recreate the reader mechanism from scratch. Tomorrow world war 3 happens. We're bombed back to the stone age. Thousands of years from now, humanity has returned to the level it is today, but with no knowledge or intact examples of previous technology. How do you explain how to build something, when the language, the words, and the understanding of physics and technology are all different (and possibly wrong or incomplete)?

    We've been trying for a long time to come up with a universal language; Partly in case we ever contact E.T., but also because of the problem of language fragmentation. Human language tends to diverge, not converge. How do you manage to tell someone how to construct a complex device from scratch, without any linguistic foundation and scientific understanding to build from?

    Civilization in a bottle: Not as easy as it sounds.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:Long term data archival by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Civilization in a bottle: Not as easy as it sounds.

      I don't know about bottles, but Sid Meier can put Civilization on a plastic disc.

  4. A few hundred million years later by ByteSlicer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Scientist 1 : Look! We found these crystals with dots on it. We believe they're some ancient data storage discs.
    Scientist 2 : Cool! What do they say?
    Scientist 1 : We don't know, we need the software to decode them.
    Scientist 2 : And where is the software?
    Scientist 1 : We're pretty sure it's on one of the discs...
    (Scientist 1 : Also, we need a running DRM server, whatever that may be)

    1. Re:A few hundred million years later by Sparticus789 · · Score: 3, Funny

      I am Sparticus and my collection is amazing.

      --
      sudo make me a sandwich
  5. Most Excellent! by carrier+lost · · Score: 3, Funny

    100 million years, right?

    ' That means I can use this to store my music collection until I finally have time to categorize and playlist it.

    --
    XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
    1. Re:Most Excellent! by Malizar · · Score: 4, Funny

      And it may be out of copyright by then.

  6. Long Now: Rosetta Project by handy_vandal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Rosetta Disk fits in the palm of your hand, yet it contains over 13,000 pages of information on over 1,500 human languages. The pages are microscopically etched and then electroformed in solid nickel, a process that raises the text very slightly - about 100 nanometers - off of the surface of the disk. Each page is only 400 microns across - about the width of 5 human hairs - and can be read through a microscope at 650X as clearly as you would from print in a book. Individual pages are visible at a much lower magnification of 100X. The outer ring of text reads "Languages of the World" in eight major world languages.

    Link

    --
    -kgj