Via the Long Now blog, I ran across this article describing researchers’ efforts to create a data storage system to last a thousand years or more. Rather than rely on optical or magnetic media, both of which can be corrupted fairly easily over decades — much less hundreds of years — of storage, Japanese researchers proposed a system of stacked wafers composed of mask ROM,
Thus, the researchers proposed the idea of saving data on the mask ROM with electron-beam direct-writing technology, stocking the wafers and packaging them with SiO2 to form a “slate.” When a wafer (reader) for reading data is attached to the slate, it becomes possible to supply power and communicate signals by wireless.
If four 15-inch wafers made by using 45nm CMOS technology are stacked, the memory capacity will be 2.5 Tbits.
As long as humidity levels are kept low, the proposed device would have a lifespan of hundreds of years.
The Long Now blog adds a nice twist on how to solve a problem inherent with any such device — a thousand years from now, how will our descendants know how to access the data?
If someone finds this disk 1,000 years from now, how will they know how to access the information? We think a microetched instruction manual might do very nicely.
Nice. That’s how I plan to backup my World of Warcraft videos.