Hitachi Storage Will be on Eternal Glass

The data storage industry has made great strides in recent years by reducing the cost and increase the speed and duration of devices for digital archiving. Hitachi nevertheless wants to bring the entire industry to a real new scenario: The company of Japanese descent is  studying a saddle on the glass for saving information in digital format.The storage times much longer than those guaranteed by the current media combined with a greater resistance to external agents.

In the laboratories, The group demonstrated the possibility of using the quartz glass for storing bits and made possible the storage of facts on glass as well as if it were a traditional magnetic disk. Each bit in this way is represented by a small hole in the glass.With the current prototypes that have up to four layers of holes to increase the density of information that can be stored. Currently stopped at 40 MB every 6.5 square centimeters : by that point of view, in other words, the glass substrates are comparable to the current CD.

The main advantage of such a solution, however, lies in their strength: According to Hitachi, in fact, there would be the ability to store data for over 100 million years  without the   sign of degradation. Furthermore, some tests have shown the resistance of this material to radio waves as well as to a source of heat capable of giving rise to a temperature of about 1000 degrees Celsius for over two hours. The glass supports are therefore highly resistant and some researchers are ready to bet on the ability to retrieve the information stored in.

At the moment in the laboratories of Japanese society are being studied some improvements to the technology in question which seems to be destined to make its debut on the market before 2015. It is also likely that the first applications could include areas or military government, making this technology the exclusive preserve of some institutions in the first phase and has made it available to the public until later.

The deterioration of the media (together with the low longevity of sizes) is one of the problems afflicting the world of computing. In an era in which all the information is converted to digital and stored in this form and the service life becomes a major issue because it is the limit beyond which the storage is not able to go. The limits are most often physical, closely related to the nature of the support. The design of long-term storage solutions could change the cards on the table and keep their paper back to being mourned for his excellent role in the centuries to pass on information, art, knowledge and experience.

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Posted by Paracha on November 26, 2012. Filed under Innovation, News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.