this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
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"the medium is silica crystal, similar to optical cable, it's highly durable. It's also capacious: The technology can store up to 360 TB of data on a 5-inch glass platter."

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I've seen this particular revolutionary technology come by about once a year for the past two decades or so, so let's say I'm not holding my breath and I will toss this one on the large pile of "bullshit tech articles"

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

and just like every other storage medium, it will last for eons..and die about .5 femtoseconds before you have a critical need to pull data off.

[–] Raxiel@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Open AI just bought out all the glass platter production. Not only will consumers not be able to store their data for 14gy, they won't have anywhere to set down their drinks either

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

prints article out

places it on an overflowing, ancient pile of documents of promising, science proved data storage methods that haven't made it to public use yet

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

I'm up to 45TB of actual used storage. I just want another tape analog. I want inexpensive, slow, long-term storage I can move off-site easily. This paying double to keep disks around and then moving them in boxes is just bad, and online storage is stupid expensive at those sizes.

Was running on Backblaze for years until they screwed around with my client enough that I can't backup my NAS reliably. I'm not a company, I'm not going to pay the cost of my disks every year to store the content of my disks.

I've been considering for a few years standing up a 2u box in colocation.

[–] Limonene@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Remember Memristors? They're commercially available today, at 200 EUR per bit.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago

wow, sign me up for a couple of dozen terabytes of that!

I also remember people burning pitts on scotch tape, then rolling it up and reading it in 3d :)

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 30 points 2 days ago (2 children)

How hf can you have 5D space within 3D space? This sounds like marketing bullshit.

The 5D Memory Crystal stores data by using tiny voxels – 3D pixels – in fused silica glass, etched by femtosecond laser pulses. These voxels possess "birefringence," meaning that their light refraction characteristics vary depending upon the polarization and direction of incoming light. 

That difference in light orientation and strength can be read in conjunction with the voxel's location (x, y, z coordinates), allowing data to be encoded in five dimensional space.

Oh, I get it now. It's a five-dimensional mathematical space which is given by the three physical space dimensions plus the difference in light orientation and the difference the light strength.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

5D is the wrong term, the correct term is multiplex.

[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago

It's not strength, but rotation. Shoot a photon at the cube at a certain spot, you get data out of it. Hit the same spot in the cube with light that is polarized perpendicular to the first, and you get different data out of it.

Er... that's what it sounds like, anyway...

[–] Sarothazrom@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] Thteven@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For real, what am I going to do when the sun swallows the earth in 4 billion years?

[–] Cheems@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You may be entitled to compensation

[–] crandlecan@mander.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

Any number I could call?

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 151 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@remindme@mstdn.social 14,000,000,000 years

[–] alias_qr_rainmaker@lemmy.world 69 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I will remember to check my lemmy inbox right after the earth gets eaten whole by the sun

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

If it is so easy to write to, seems it would be equally easy to erase

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bro has never used a permanent marker

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A little bit of rubbing alcohol and it comes right off

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 1 points 13 hours ago

Good point. In my lab I've used ethanol and acetone as well.

[–] UnPassive@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Depends on the surface the marker was used on.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

"easy if you have a diffraction-limited watt-scale laser" I guess

Intentional deletion is a lot different to entropy-caused bitrot

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Finally some worthy storage for memes!

Eat your heart out Ea-nāṣir.

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[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 76 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

Remember that CDs, CDRs, and so on were originally pitched as surviving 100 years. Turns out they last a highly variable amount of time but potentially as little as 2-3 years before they degrade, depending on the construction.

So I'll just say, this is clearly a theoretical value.

Edit: Words.

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[–] hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

Oh good it can fit the next Call of Duty game.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 55 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (13 children)

I wonder what the read write speed is. Imagine storing your entire movie collection in a crystal the size of a coaster.

Might not be for home consumers anytime soon, article says: “In the next 18 months, the company hopes to have a field-deployable read device that customers can use to read archived data. But SPhotonix isn't presently targeting the consumer market. Kazansky estimates that the initial cost of the read device will be about $6,000 and the initial cost of the write device will be about $30,000.”

Then goes on to mention they need about 3-4 years of R&D so they can be ready to license the tech

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 50 points 3 days ago (2 children)

If it's slow, then it's the central backup and you use anything else for regular use. Just having it as a fallback for recovery would be huge.

[–] ieatpwns@lemmy.world 37 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I’ll have a crystal collection that’s actually useful

[–] Jerkface@piefed.social 39 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

"This one's for memory."
"You actually believe in that garbage?"
"No, you don't understand..."

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[–] boring_bohr@feddit.org 40 points 3 days ago (3 children)

In case you missed it in the article, the transfer speeds are mentioned just two paragraphs prior to the one you cited:

Over the next three to four years, Kazansky said, SPhotonix aims to improve the data transfer speed of its technology from a write time of 4 megabytes per second (MBps) and read time of 30 MBps to a read/write speed of 500 MBps, which would be competitive with archival tape backup systems.

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[–] ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Excellent, I will catalog my journals of my metamorphosis into a giant worm on these.

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[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 39 points 3 days ago (21 children)

This grinds my gears any time that a product is touted as lasting X time. Did you put it through a typical use case or scenario for that X time? No? Then you cannot definitively say that it will last that long.

Based on their bullshit statement, I can last 7 years pounding someone's ass relentlessly without pause for any reason. Trust me bro.

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[–] AppleTea@lemmy.zip 23 points 2 days ago (3 children)

See, now this is the tech I would understand pouring billions into. Give every nation on earth a durable copy of the last 100 years of medicine, physics, biology. That's what a reasonable ruling class ought to do.

[–] rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago (2 children)

At least give them to the nations which aren't currently trying to ignore and undo the last 100 years of medicine, physics, and biology. (Sorry, United States.)

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[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

But is it safe from the cats? 😼

glass shattering sounds

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[–] dparticiple@sh.itjust.works 40 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A friendly request - please de-clickbait your headlines and say what the material is (although you do mention it in your summary).

[–] tate@lemmy.sdf.org 41 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When a post is a link to an article, I would prefer that the post title match the article. Many news communities actually require that.

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[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Denis Villeneuve nailed it years ago.

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[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

...but only one million years into it's life span the human race is gone and aliens are unwittingly melting them down for raw material.

[–] matlag@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

1 million years? You mean 200 top!

[–] xia@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Well... I was trying to identify the time that the aliens would come, not that of our demise, but... point taken.

(i.e. "it" was supposed to point to the memory crystal)

[–] crandlecan@mander.xyz 6 points 2 days ago

That's the spirit! 👍

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