For decades we have relied on magnetic media to store our data. From tape storage, such as that used by the Voyager probes, to magnetic tape storage, Floppy disks and hard drivesHowever, these options are far from ideal for preserving any type of information for a long time as they tend to degrade.
Imagine you wanted to set up a digital “doomsday vault.” You would need a storage medium that was robust and reliable enough to remain unchanged for thousands of years. Microsoft knows this all too well, and, oddly enough, it is working on a completely new backup system.
Project Silica, a project that evolves
The Redmond giant launched an initiative known as Project Silica in 2016. It consisted of storing information in quartz crystals so that it would last over time. Far from just staying on paper, a year later, the firm announced that it had managed to save the ‘Superman’ film in a small module.
Over time, this alternative technology to traditional disks has improved enormously and, on the same surface, Microsoft can now store 7 TB of storage, a capacity that can clearly be useful to store about 3,500 movies or 1.75 million songs. And, best of all, it is guaranteed to last for about 10,000 years.
So we are witnessing live how quartz crystal storage becomes a reality. For now, however, it is only intended for to laboratory testsIn any case, it is very interesting to know how the company behind Windows has achieved this impressive feat. Let’s take a look.
The storage mechanism takes place in several steps. A femtosecond laser writes on the quartz crystal, a polarization-sensitive microscopic system reads the information, and a computer system decodes it. The quartz crystals are stored in a specific position within a library.
The system has been designed so that the library can fulfill its function of storing each of the glass modules without power supplyHowever, there is a robotic system that is responsible for searching the shelves for the module in question and transferring it to the electronic microscopic system.
Redmond says that the laser writing system was initially inefficient, but they have managed to improve it a lot. Specifically, as we said, a single crystal module can store several TB, and they can last for more than 10,000 years without the need for special care and, above all, without electricity.
The company imagines a future cloud storage system based on Project Silica. It’s a very interesting idea, but everything seems to indicate that we will still have to wait to see it in actionThe project is currently a proof of concept that requires “3 to 4 more stages of development” before its implementation.
Images | Microsoft
At WorldOfSoftware | Cloud storage can also be decentralized. This is the system used by CERN
*A previous version of this article was published in October 2023