Quartz Glass Storage from Hitachi Preserves Data for 100 Million Years

By David Tobia
September 28, 2012

Hitachi has demonstrated a technology that allows the company to encode data on “quartz glass.” The technique can reportedly store data for 100 million years.
Although the quartz glass formula is proprietary, TechSpot suggests it could be fused quartz. When quartz is subjected to high temperatures for long periods of time it “loses its crystalline structure and can be made into a glass-like substance known as fused quartz.”
Lasers create microscopic pits in four layers of quartz glass that represent binary data. Although the new technology boasts impressive longevity, it can only store about 40MB per square inch. This is about equal to compact disc density, but is much less dense than magnetic storage devices.
The claims that the material could last 100 million years come from accelerated age tests that exposed the material to 1,000 degrees Celsius for two hours. The glass reportedly showed no signs of degradation during the test.

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