"War and Peace" 875 000 times per piece of glass: a new type of hard drive from Microsoft (video)

Scientists say that a small square glass is able to store 1. 75 million songs for thousands of years and significantly save space. Cambridge's Microsoft Research Researchers have developed a revolutionary way of using glass storage for a huge array of data, which will help save resources and a place in our world where influx of digital information requires increasing data storage.

According to scientists on the official website of Project Silica, if we continue to go the way we go now, then we will have to fill the entire planet with hard drives, only to store our data. Fortunately, a small sheet of glass can now contain several terabytes of data, which is enough to store approximately 1. 75 million songs or music for 13 years.

The data is extracted using a high -speed microscope with computer control from the glass disk library that stores data in three -dimensional pixels called the Vocabulary. About 3500 films can be stored on each plate for a scale on each plate. Or enough movies without interruption to play them for over half a year without repetition. The glass plate could contain the entire text of "war and peace"-one of the longest ever written novels-about 875,000 times.

And most importantly, it can store data in a small space of the data center (COD). Magnetic storage of information on the usual hard drives has a number of problems: a limited service life requires frequent backup, which subsequently increases energy consumption and operating costs. The user's hard drive can last about five years.

The tape method of storage (an expensive method used in critical storage infrastructure) is more resistant to wear, but is still limited to about ten years, researchers say. Therefore, Microsoft Research suggests using glass plates in size approximately from a stand for storage for thousands of years. This technology allows you to record data, knowing that they will remain unchanged and safe, which is a significant step forward in the steady storage of data.

After writing the data inside the glass cannot be changed. The Silica project is focused on innovative storage of quartz glass in collaboration with the Microsoft Azure team and is looking for more sustainable ways to archive data. Project Silica uses Azure Azure to decode data stored in glass, which speeds up reading and recording and allows you to store more data. Earlier, Focus wrote that Microsoft was no longer able to cope with his appetites.