It seems like 6 or 7 years ago there was research into new forms of storage, using crystals or DNA that promised ultra high density storage. I know the read/write speed was not very fast, but I thought by now there would be more progress in the area. Apparently in 2021 there was a team that got a 16GB file stored in DNA. In the last month there’s some company (Biomemory) that lets you store 1KB of data into DNA for $1,000, but if you want to read it, you have to send it to them. I don’t understand why you would use that today.
I wonder if it will ever be viable for us to have DNA readers/writers… but I also wonder if there are other new types of data storage coming up that might be just as good.
If you know anything about the DNA research or other new storage forms, what do you think is the most promising one?
I recall watching a documentary (on Curiosity Stream maybe? I’m no longer subscribed) on data storage longevity. It covered DNA storage, which I think this PBS video w/ transcript provides more recent coverage of its developments. As well as holographic storage, which I could only find the Wikipedia page for.
As for which one I think might be the future, it’s tough to say. Tape is pretty good and cheap but slow for offline storage. Archival media will probably end up all being offline storage, although I could see a case for holographic/optical storage being near line. Future online storage will probably remain a tough pickle: cheap, plentiful, fast; select at most two, maybe.