Durable ‘hard drive’ has lifespan of millions of years

Scientists say they have developed a hard drive that should last about 10 million years. They used a sapphire disk as the basis, on which information was engraved with platinum.

The hard drive in question was developed by Andra, a French organization that manages the storage of radioactive waste. Because such materials remain hazardous for tens of thousands of years, information about their storage must be kept for a long time, making many conventional storage methods unsuitable. The durable hard drive has been developed to ensure that radioactive waste management information is not lost.

According to Andra, the sapphire and platinum-based hard drives should contain information about locations where radioactive waste is stored. This should protect future generations in tens of thousands of years from accidentally excavating the material again. In particular, archaeologists who dig in places where radioactive waste has been dumped pose a risk.

The scientists have shown a prototype of their hard drive, for which the production costs amounted to 25,000 euros. By engraving platinum in a sapphire plate, according to the scientists, 40,000 pages of information can be stored per hard disk. Because the information is written with ‘real’ letters instead of bits, a microscope is needed to read the data again.

According to the makers, the hard drive has been subjected to all kinds of tests to test its lifespan. For example, the disc was immersed in a bath with acid. They also expect the disc to last about 10 million years.