Safe data storage for millions of years?

Japanese electronics firm Hitachi says it has invented a way of storing data that could keep it safe and stable for hundreds of millions of years. The technology behind the long-term storage capability involves a laser that is employed to encode data into a piece of quartz glass with dots corresponding to binary code that can be read back by an optical microscope, ZDNet reported. Hitachi announced the laser/quartz storage technology in Tokyo Monday. Company researchers said they tested the potential longevity of the technology by heating a sample of the encoded quartz glass to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours. All of the information remained intact and could be read back after the sample cooled, they said One drawback, researchers said, is that the technology cannot store a lot of information in the available space. In tests, the quartz glass method was able to store around 40 megabytes per square inch, whereas a modern hard drive can store up to one terabyte per square inch. Still, Hitachi said, the new technology could be useful for ultra long-term data archives of cultural information, among other uses.