A German start-up is testing a new storage technology that is said to be more resilient to the whims of nature. Ceramics, lasers and QR codes are the secret ingredients.

No form of storage lasts forever. Hard drives, SSDs, DVDs and other physical media all have an expiration date. Furthermore, disaster can always happen and you may lose all your files. Even virtual cloud storage is not untouchable. German startup Cerabyte is testing a new storage technology that it believes can be the ideal solution for long-term storage in data centers.

Cerabyte regularly releases demos of its technology on YouTube and Vimeo. The data is carried by a glass plate that is reinforced with a ceramic layer. The company produces cartridges that can hold up to 100 PB of data, as well as tapes with a capacity of up to 1 exabyte (1000 PB). The data itself is written onto the disk by a microscopic laser in the form of QR codes. The laser drills “holes” into the glass that represent the binary value zero, unprocessed glass represents the binary value one.

Five thousand years of storage

Cerabyte’s claims are impressive. The ceramic protective layer must withstand natural influences such as fires, floods, power surges and sudden drops in temperature. The German company also claims that its solution can reduce storage costs by 75 percent. This could make the technology interesting for long-term storage of passive data: according to Cerabyte, its cassettes and tapes last up to five thousand years.

The technology is currently still in the experimental phase. It is still unclear when the German company plans to bring its solution onto the market. If the storage technology works as promised, companies could be interested.