Microsoft Project Silica: Glass Plates That Store Data for 10,000 Years
Project Silica could be the future of long-term data storage.
By Ryan Whitwam October 17, 2023
Credit: Microsoft
As data storage becomes ever cheaper, many of us have accumulated gigabytes (or even terabytes) of it that must be kept safe. Whether you're storing your data locally or in the cloud, the storage medium has a finite lifespan. Microsoft is working on a new kind of storage technology, called Project Silica, that could store data essentially forever without any electricity. Instead of writing data to a magnetic storage medium, it encodes that data in a sheet of glass smaller than a DVD.
Microsoft engineer Ant Rowstron explains that simply keeping data safe over time is a monumental undertaking. Hard drives might last five years (or less) in a data center before they need to be replaced, and a tape drive could last twice as long if you're lucky. Manufacturing, powering, and transferring data between drives requires time, money, and resources that could be spent better elsewhere. If only we had a way to store the data more reliably. That's Project Silica, which you can see in action in a new video from Microsoft research below.
The team has developed a system that writes data to sheets of glass using short laser pulses. The laser physically alters the internal structure of the glass, so even scratches on the surface won't alter the code. Since glass is a very stable material, engineers estimate the data could be stored safely for 10,000 years or more. A single plate has enough space for 1.75 million music tracks, which works out to about 7TB of total storage. Notably, the glass plates don't need any power to do their job. You just stack them on a shelf and read them when needed.