Hitachi earlier this week unveiled a new data storage technology that the company claims can survive extreme temperatures and conditions without being damages or degrading.

The new tech makes use of quartz glass as a storage medium. Information in binary is added to the slices of glass by etching dots onto the surface which are readable with an optical microscope. The researchers working on the innovation say that the data should survive almost anything short of the glass sheet being broken and the data can be read as long as there is a computer capable of reading binary available. Quartz glass is frequently used for laboratory equipment and should be able to take a fair amount of punishment.

Hitachi’s prototype glass storage is 2 centimetres square by 2mm thick and is made up of four layers of dots. The data storage system apparently holds about 40MB of data per square inch, putting it in line with current music CDs for data capacity. The researchers say that adding additional layers to the sliver of glass should not prove challenging, increasing the storage medium’s capacity.

Hitachi have not yet decided when they intend to implement the technology in a practical manner but they are reportedly planning to start with storage solutions for governments, museums and religious groups.

Source/Image: AFP