So, pens? - Harvard’s New Dye-Based Storage Could Preserve Data for Thousands of Years

[Lightwreather]

Summary

According to an ACS Central Science report, Harvard’s George Whitesides lab chemists have developed a new method of storage that it says involves using seven common mixtures of fluorescent dyes to save data in a faster, more efficient way than other exotic molecular information-based data archival technologies.

 

Quotes

Quote

ACS Central Science describes the approach, which involves dropping the dyes through an inkjet printer and reading the varying wavelengths of light it emits through a microscope. The binary message is then decoded from the molecules “back to documents, books, photos, videos, or anything else that can be digitally stored,” according to a news post from Harvard University.

Researchers predict that data could stay intact for thousands of years using the method, as opposed to contemporary storage devices like Blu-rays and computer drives, that have an average lifespan of 40 years at most. Once data is recorded, the dye method uses no energy in order to maintain itself, unlike most forms of bulk data storage that use costly physical servers to keep data available. The lab also says the process adverts issues like water damage and hacking, making it an ideal method of storing sensitive data, such as financial or legal records.

 The dye method is also relatively cheaper to produce and has speedier read/write capabilities than any molecular information method to store data that the Whitesides lab has studied throughout the years. The dye system however writes at an average of 128 bits per second and reads at a rate of 469, which is the fastest rate achieved by any molecular method to date. While this is faster than those competing methods, it still pales in comparison to today's SSDs and HDDs, meaning that this is firmly intended for long-term archival storage only.

 

My thoughts

So, after Decades of using Pen and paper to store information, We moved to Disc drives and SSDs and now, we're moving to a greater medium of storage..... Pen and paper! Jokes aside, it really seems like something we've been doing for centuries just on a microscopic scale. Well, in terms of mass storage, it seems to do pretty well. However, you (And I mean especially you data horders, you know who you are) probably shouldn't look to be adding this to your system anytime soon, Its read and write speeds are incredibly painfully slow, however, that might be fine for a lot of data archivists who might have been forced to use Tapes. However, while they claim that this would last longer than many other methods of storage, I can't help but think that this would depend on the medium on which this printed. All-in-all this seems to pretty cool, we've achived microscopic printing (Ofc, I could be misunderstanding how this whole works). Maybe one day, we'll be prinintg on atoms

 

Sources

Tom's hardware

ACS

Harvard

[Nup]

A nice idea to use an existing technology - printers - to encode data, Impressive that they managed to get a proof of concept to work quite well, goes to show that the idea is very reasonable. Doesn't seem super dense tho. Thought the long term arguments for the stability are a little theoretical, it'd be cool to see more work on that side of things, im sure that there is promise there too.

 

Density is also not strong at 0.0271mbyte/mm2 vs blueray at 23mbyte/mm2... though maybe thats apples vs oranges as i guess long term storage is more the goal.

[Radium_Angel]

I want to be around 1,000 years from now when data archeologists run across some old hentai stored by this, and wonder what kind of society they've discovered. 

[RejZoR]

It's usually not the longevity of the medium that's an issue, it's the interface to access it. I mean, try listening to an audio tape today. Or watch a VHS tape today. Hell, even CD is pretty close to that point... Or try using an IDE drive...

[Shreyas1]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's usually not the longevity of the medium that's an issue, it's the interface to access it. I mean, try listening to an audio tape today. Or watch a VHS tape today. Hell, even CD is pretty close to that point... Or try using an IDE drive...

Well if it's just ink on paper, I'm guessing all that's needed is a camera and some software? 

[RejZoR]

3 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

Well if it's just ink on paper, I'm guessing all that's needed is a camera and some software? 

I'll rephrase it. "Means to decode it"

 

You can never have "just some camera and just some software". It needs to work for that specifically and those things are always problematic at one point or another.

[Brooksie359]

48 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's usually not the longevity of the medium that's an issue, it's the interface to access it. I mean, try listening to an audio tape today. Or watch a VHS tape today. Hell, even CD is pretty close to that point... Or try using an IDE drive...

That is what I was thinking. It would be a shame if people thousands of years from now find this new technology stored somewhere but don't have the corresponding technology to read it. Honestly pen and paper is nice in the way that so long as the ink and paper are in good condition anyone can access the info on the paper. Granted you would have to understand what language is being used and who knows what language people will use 1000 years from now. Granted who knows what will happen in 1000 years. 

[TetraSky]

Quote

 We have written, stored, and read a total of approximately 400 kilobits (both text and images) with greater than 99% recovery of information, written at an average rate of 128 bits/s (16 bytes/s) and read at a rate of 469 bits/s (58.6 bytes/s).

So... Not only is it not an absolute 100% recovery of the information... But it's also terribly slow.

There might be a future for this, but I don't expect it to be anytime soon.

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

It's usually not the longevity of the medium that's an issue, it's the interface to access it. I mean, try listening to an audio tape today. Or watch a VHS tape today. Hell, even CD is pretty close to that point... Or try using an IDE drive...

You're lucky if you have a working optical drive from the mid to late 90's...pretty much all of mine died with various electrical failures (bands and/or gears were still fine).

[Shreyas1]

2 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'll rephrase it. "Means to decode it"

 

You can never have "just some camera and just some software". It needs to work for that specifically and those things are always problematic at one point or another.

Good point. I was assuming this thing would be more like a barcode scanner though, I mean we still use those despite being however old they are

 

I also assumed that it would be much easier to emulate software in the future than it would be to recreate some obselete form of hardware. Though when we're dealing with timeframes as long as the OP, even that would be uncertain 

[williamcll]

7 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

I want to be around 1,000 years from now when data archeologists run across some old hentai stored by this, and wonder what kind of society they've discovered. 

It's a ritual

[Radium_Angel]

37 minutes ago, williamcll said:

It's a ritual

It's....something alright

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

You're lucky if you have a working optical drive from the mid to late 90's...pretty much all of mine died with various electrical failures (bands and/or gears were still fine).

I have several, I should bust them out a check them.

 

 

I also have cassette players, PC's with IDE, PCI and firewire,  8mm digital cassette reader/recorder and VHS.  Being an old school tech head means I have kept things reasonably well looked after.   

[Dabombinable]

6 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I have several, I should bust them out a check them.

 

 

I also have cassette players, PC's with IDE, PCI and firewire,  8mm digital cassette reader/recorder and VHS.  Being an old school tech head means I have kept things reasonably well looked after.   

Most of my old drives are from under a couple of houses. They look physically fine...but definitely weren't looked after.

[grg994]

Please note this quote from the original article:

 

"We have written, stored, and read a total of approximately 400 kilobits (both text and images) with greater than 99% recovery of information, written at an average rate of 128 bits/s (16 bytes/s) and read at a rate of 469 bits/s (58.6 bytes/s)."

 

Nope, no measurement unit prefix is missing.

 

Nevertheless is offers zero practical use in this form, this is very cool idea and experiment.

[Beskamir]

On 1/19/2022 at 10:47 AM, Radium_Angel said:

I want to be around 1,000 years from now when data archeologists run across some old hentai stored by this, and wonder what kind of society they've discovered. 

Makes you wonder if some of the stuff we found about the ancients were similarly stuff they all knew were obviously make belief but since we weren't there we all think that was their religion or something.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Beskamir said:

Makes you wonder if some of the stuff we found about the ancients were similarly stuff they all knew were obviously make belief but since we weren't there we all think that was their religion or something.

 

I've often sat through documentaries on dinosaurs and ancient civilizations and thought to myself, the level of detail they claim to know is too detailed,  some of their claims are so detailed you couldn't even know it with that level of certainty if you were studying something alive and in action today.  

 

i.e The ancient nomads of X originally migrated from across the oceans. 

the mating call of the pterydactyl sounded like X

the crest on the apteryx was blue

my mother in laws motive for buying cheap wine at the wedding had nothing to do with my mohawk.