DailyDirt: The Future Of Storage
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Storing digital data can be unreliable if you want it to last a really long time. But there are many ways to store vast amounts of data, and if you’re not in a hurry to retrieve the data, it can be somewhat cheap to maintain an enormous amount of information nowadays. Here are just a few examples of storing LOTS of data in somewhat unconventional ways.
- Printing at about 100,000 dots per inch in full color has been achieved by researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. As a proof of principle, a test image of Lenna was formed on a silicon wafer covered with a nanoscale metal coating. [url]
- Amazon is starting to offer archival storage for just $0.01 per gigabyte per month. This Glacier storage service is aimed at replacing old tape archives and geographically distinct facilities, but retrieving the data isn’t so convenient: data retrieval requests can take hours (hence the name Glacier) and there’s also a retrieval fee after you’ve accessed more than 5% of your data vault in a month. [url]
- Geneticists in Boston have stored a 5.27-megabit book (containing 53,246 words, 11 JPG image files and a JavaScript program) on DNA. This is the highest density of non-biological data ever encoded by DNA, and a gram of material could store 455 exabytes of data. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
Filed Under: archive, data, dna, exabyte, gigabyte, nanoscale, printing, storage
Companies: amazon
Comments on “DailyDirt: The Future Of Storage”
More fun….
http://moophz.com/article/sperm-data-storage-sds-new-way-expand-your-storage-space
Hey Michael Ho, I have but a simple request. I would prefer at least you to do for what an article you could do since it pertains to a lot of science.
I simply request that do an article on the late Neil Armstrong.
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I couldn’t possibly think of a more inefficient storage than someone’s balls. Except maybe no storage.
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I have yet to find how much capacity the human female egg stores.
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At least with two balls you can set the data storage as a Mirrored (RAID 1) array. That way if one ball fails, you still have a complete backup.
There is still the problem of overcoming the off-site storage solution, because you are keeping all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Just don’t get kicked in the organic hard drive(s), and you (and your data) should be okay.
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DogBreath, I just thought upon what you said 🙂
I think in order to set up a RAID1 Array, conception would have to take place, and then another 21 years and 9 months to completely format the hard disk.
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Wally,
I personally don’t have much to say about the passing of Neil Armstrong, but for you, I’ll see if I can collect a few relevant links…
Mike
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Thanks Michael 🙂 It means a lot. Might I suggest stuff about lunar exploration ?
“This is the highest density of non-biological data ever encoded by DNA, and a gram of material could store 455 exabytes of data.”
Future Headlines:
1 All biologically stored data Mostly Spam
2 MPAA/RIAA claim infringement on anyone with genetic material
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3. Natural biological DNA replication in living beings/ non-sentient living bio-drives to start being metered and taxed by Government and the DNAAA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid Association of America.)
Think of it as a “media tax” because you “might” use DNA to pirate copyrighted material.
Also, If your DNA over replicates during the month (i.e. get pregnant or get cancer), you will be charged an extra fee for that process, and/or up to “termination” of you and your account (i.e. put to death by the state).
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Well, they’re more likely to find a way to stop the growth of cancer than to stop piracy, so let’s give ’em a chance.
Printing at about 100,000 dots per inch in full color
How long until governments start demanding that any printer capable of such high-density printing put a microscopic watermark on every printout so that they can be tracked?
Or until the copyright industry starts demanding that they build in some kind of mechanism that magically detects copyrighted images and refuses to print them?
Or until they inevitably get sued for patent infringement by a company that has never actually created anything, but which holds the patent on some trivially simple process that their printing method uses?
it's what the nerds wanted all along
Now we just need a complete physical description of Lenna stored on DNA, and a 3D printer that can synthesize human-size living organisms…
Wait… Lenna had her complete specs stored on DNA. And she was capable of synthesizing human beings. I have to rethink this.