New dye-based technique could make tape storage obsolete

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Scientists from Harvard'south George Whitesides laboratory have developed a new mode to store digital data which they say is not merely cheaper, simply could last for "thousands of years".

As reported in the ACS Central Scientific discipline Written report, the method revolves effectually seven common mixtures of fluorescent dye. The dyes are dropped through an inkjet printer onto an epoxy surface. After that, a special microscope tin read the varying wavelengths of light emitted by the dyes, thus decoding the binary letters. Anything from documents, books, photos, videos, to any other form of digital archives, can exist saved, and read this way, the researchers merits.

Different today's storage methods, whose lifespan is estimated at nearly forty years, the dye could last "thousands of years". After printing the data onto the epoxy, in that location's no energy needed to maintain the records. What's more, the very nature of the process makes it immune to water damage, or hacking, leading scientists to believe it could be an ideal solution for storing sensitive information.

Archive of the future

The read/write capabilities of this new method are relatively slow, making it a potentially practiced solution for long-term storage, simply non good for twenty-four hours-to-twenty-four hours activities - and it's cheaper to produce.

Nonetheless, when it comes to the read/write capabilities, although it's faster than whatsoever other molecular information storage method to date, information technology's still pretty tedious compared to SSDs and HDDs of today.

While the dye organisation averages 128 $.25 per 2nd write speed, and 459 bits per second read speed, today's typical 7200 RPM HDDs evangelize a read/write speed of eighty-160MB/s. SSDs, on the other hand, can deliver read/write speeds of between 200 MB/due south to 550 MB/south.

These numbers considered, the dye method would just exist viable for long-term archival storage, such as cloud fill-in solutions.

The researchers have licensed the technology to a new digital data storage company, it was further said, with the goal's company to plough it into a commercial product.a