A sapphire hard disk can last one million years and resolve a problem worrying archaeologists. Thursday, Patrick Charton of the French nuclear waste management agency ANDRA, presented a way out of data storage problems, an information-engraved sapphire disk using platinum. The disk is being called the ultimate, if not ultimately unaffordable, HDD. The disk was announced at this week’s Euroscience Open Forum, a pan-European event drawing researchers, as a way to provide information for future archaeologists.
The solution is in the form of two thin disks of industrial sapphire, molecularly fused, with a thin layer of inscribed platinum. The disks were immersed in acid to test their durability and to simulate aging.
With the sapphire disk, up to 40,000 miniaturized pages of text or images etched can be inscribed in the platinum. The information would be read with microscope.
via Million-year storage solution is set in stone.
