Microsoft develops ultra durable glass plates that can store several TBs of data for 10000 years

Of all the stuff I've seen in sci fi movies and tv shows, I really didn't think the computer chips on glowing transparent plates was gonna become reality. What a crazy world this is.

"Project Silica’s goal is to write data in a piece of glass and store it on a shelf until it is needed. Once written, the data inside the glass is impossible to change."

Very important note here.

Archeologist in 1000 years: "this glass has some interesting etching, must have had some religious significance.

Some of the same technology was actually also used to create windows.

Logs into the SilicaArk long term storage system for the first time.

“Welcome Andy, would you like to use the optimistic theme or the pessimistic theme?”

Chooses optimistic. Types in command to show storage capacity.

“The glass is half full.”

They're called isolinear chips.

Didn’t someone make a holographic cube some ten or so years ago with the same promises.

I never get excited by this stuff. If I see it in Best Buy, then I’ll believe it.

Awesome. So Microsoft, does this mean I'll finally get access to the other 3TB of OneDrive storage that I pay for on my family plan? Or do I still have to create random accounts that would simulate other family members in order to use it?

This is also the 10,000th time I've heard about this so there is that...

That's a lot of start menu ads and telemetry code!

Cats: Challenge accepted.

Was it minority report or the matrix that showed humans storing data on glass?

Either way, this is pretty cool.

It seems like it would make for a great replacement for Tape Backups that are currently used for long term storage. They are easy to write to but hard to read from and restore. It'll probably be a great technology to put backups on especially if it lasts as long as they say. The challenge will probably come in with the specialized reading and writing laser / microscopes being expensive.

So I read many times that it can store "several TBs of data" but how many exactly? 2, 3, 5, 10?

Do they know exactly? Is it possible that they write 5 TBs and when they try to read it, they can only read like 3, losing the other 2 TBs?

I remember when they told us a CD would last for hundreds of years LOL

Is this what Hal 9000's memories were stored on?

So... all the from Star Gate glass stuff might be quite accurate?

Finally. I can store my porn in my glasses.

Ah, shit... I guess my great, great, great, 100x great Martian grandkids will have to suffer leaked dickpics from ancient times.

Can they work on the 30 year old code base supporting OneDrive first? How the fuck are we supposed to willingly put our personal data up for ransom through that service?

It's fairly easy to store data for a very long time. What's hard is remembering how to read that data after all that time.

Perhaps the archives are incomplete.

Coding errors can live on in infamy!

Wow, so Microsoft can now make memory efficient Windows? A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!

10,000 years? But I want to forget about Windows 11 now.

Me taking out a piece of hermetically sealed perfectly persevered data storage glass 10000 years in the future:

Scratches it immediately

Edit:

Also me, storing several TB's of porn on ultra durable glass plates:

The future will thank me

MS: it can last for 10000 years!

Me: have you tested that

MS: well no b-

Me: your company is not even 50 years old

MS: but we ran the simulations

Me: ...

I really hate this like 'in my imaginary world, where everything is perfect and not as much as an atom of dirt comes into contact with the product, and therefore nobody uses the product while it is sealed in a vacuum chamber, then hypothetically it will still be good in a billion years. MTBF = infinity. ship it.'

Several TB you say. So one install is MS OS.

Is it durable just because it's thick, or can we use this tech in mobile screens too?

Ridulian crystal v1

What'll happen after 10,001 years?

I hope this will end up being available to regular consumers one day and not just as an expensive enterprise solution.

is this Read Write or read only?

Would you eventually be able to get data printed and have the plates sent to you, so you can store them yourself in a safe place?

This would be a great option for preserving the source media for films and videos, for example. Not just the finished product, but every take etc.

What are you going to read it with? Unless it’s photographically reduced text, like microfiche, it’s unlikely that the computer hardware and software will still exist.

Didn't intel make same thing few years ago?

I can already see the future where warlords fight over the pretty glass buried in vaults across the land so they can whittle it down into jewelry they use to decorate the skull chalices of their enemies in order to pour out libations to the magic forces from the sky that govern their lives...

Ah so that's what those traslucid bricks where in star trek!

But how unobtainable is it for the average consumer though?

i find these things cool and all but any company worth having things archived already fucked it up so much that theres not much left TO archive

at least ti feels like it

In 10k years, there either won’t be anyone left to read them, or the technology at the time won’t be able to read them.

I really don't care until I can buy one. In the meantime I have a few hdd's and an old LTO4 drive...

People 10,000 years from now will know how to read these files.

Gonna need a full 10,000 year UAT period thanks

This is best for long term photo and and video storage. Even commercial ones. And for the internet archive as well.

10,000 years is kinda hard to prove without a time machine, but sounds useful for long term archival storage.

I remember reading abiut this possibly 10 years ago or more. It's insane how long it's been in development

Unless you put it in the dishwasher to often.

I'll personally make sure that the historians of the distant future are aware of 21st century micropenis.

Archeologists will find these in 1000 years and think it's just nice glass.

To be clear though, this is single write but highly durable storage. It's not really a practical application for day to day functions.

Thats not a brag for them if you catch my drift. More like a scaring-off thing

Sounds an awful like the Millennium Disc.

Though I guess it has higher capacity and even longer life, but the article doesn't have much details.