#projectsilica — Public Fediverse posts

Now you don’t have to worry about your digital files being lost on an old hard drive. Microsoft Research has taken Project Silica out of the lab and turned it into a real system that uses regular glass. They use special lasers to write data into borosilicate glass, creating a storage medium that can last for 10,000 years. This is more than just an experiment; they’ve already stored 4.8 terabytes on a piece of glass about the size of a drink coaster.

What’s most impressive is how tough this storage is. You could put these glass slabs in boiling water or even a microwave, and the data would still be safe. Because glass doesn’t need power to keep the data intact, it’s possible to create huge archives that don’t use any electricity for cooling or upkeep. This could mean the end of the Digital Dark Age.

🧠 One glass slab holds 4.8 terabytes of permanent data.
⚡ Lasers etch 301 layers of data into 2mm of glass.
🎓 Borosilicate glass reduces the cost of archival storage.
🔍 Accelerated aging tests prove the data lasts 10 millennia.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/microsofts-new-10000-year-data-storage-medium-glass/
#DataStorage #Microsoft #FutureTech #ProjectSilica #Storage #Backup #Archive #DR #BC

The Register: Microsoft’s Project Silica promises eternal storage. It can’t get there from here. “Microsoft says that deployed at cloud scale, commercialized optical storage in glass is the only plausible, scalable solution for ultra-reliable, long-term data storage. That’s almost certainly right, and it will almost certainly never happen.”

https://winbuzzer.com/2026/03/02/microsoft-project-silica-glass-storage-10000-years-xcxwbn/

Project Silica's Glass Chip Stores 4.84TB for 10,000 Years

#Microsoft #MicrosoftResearch #Storage #ProjectSilica #GlassStorage #BigTech #MaterialsScience #DataManagement

Microsoft reports excellent progress on attempts to encode data in glass using femtosecond lasers.

Project Silica is developing technology that could preserve information for 10,000 years. The system creates groups of symbols, which are then encoded as tiny deformations, or voxels into glass with a laser.

By splitting the laser into four independent beams writing at the same time, the team say the technology can record 65.9m bits per second. Microsoft claims they could store 4.84TB of data in a 12 sq cm piece of fused silica glass, 2mm deep – about the same amount of information that is held in 2m printed books.

“All steps, including writing, reading and decoding, are fully automated, supporting robust, low-effort operation”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/18/scientists-new-way-preserve-data-microsoft #Microsoft #DataStorage #ProjectSilica #Storage #Data #ITData #InformatinTechnology #Lasers