Data Storage

Microsoft and Warner Bros. have crammed the 1978 movie Superman onto a silica glass slide the size of a drink coaster. This tough new medium is designed to last centuries, surviving punishment that would ruin film or magnetic drives.

The world's data has to be stored somewhere, and huge servers take up heaps of physical space and require huge amounts of energy. Now, Harvard researchers have developed a new system for reading and writing information with organic molecules, which could sit stable and secure for thousands of years.

With a bunch of digital cameras now able to record video is glorious 4K UHD resolution, even the highest capacity memory cards may start to tremble. Lexar is looking to ease storage anxiety by revealing the Professional 633x SDXC UHS-1 card, which crams in a terabyte of solid state memory.

At IFA this week, Samsung has unveiled the Portable SSD X5, a new solid state drive designed with speed in mind. To that end, it's kitted out with a Thunderbolt 3 connection and built on the NVMe platform, marking two firsts for Samsung's portable consumer SSDs.

Intel has unveiled what it calls the world’s densest solid state drive (SSD), packing 32 TB into a device the size of an old 12-inch ruler. The development should help data centers get more bang for their buck, cutting the cost of cooling and making more efficient use of the physical space.

A new technique can store bits as single hydrogen atoms, reaching a data density a thousand times greater than commercially available magnetic and solid-state drives.

​The SD Association, the non-profit organization responsible for setting SD memory card standards, today announced the latest iteration of the popular SD memory card. SD Express brings a maximum data transfer rate of 985 MB/s, and increases maximum storage capacity to a capacious 128 TB.

British electronic music icon Massive Attack is marking the 20th anniversary of the release of its most successful album – Mezzanine – by having it stored in DNA molecules. Digital audio will be translated into genetic code and stored in DNA strands housed in tiny glass beads.

A team of Chinese scientists has developed a new nanoparticle-based film that can store information as 3D holograms, improving data density, read and write speeds and stability in harsh conditions.

​Last month Samsung revealed its latest record-breaking large capacity solid state drive cramming 30 TB into a 2.5-inch drive format unit. Now Nimbus Data has quickly smashed Samsung’s benchmark launching the ExaDrive DC100 – a 3.5 inch SSD drive unit with a massive 100 TB capacity.

​Integrated storage on today's smartphones can quickly fill up thanks to the stills and video capabilities of their cameras. Storage anxiety is less of a concern with phones rocking a microSD, especially if you can pop in the latest capacious card from Integral when it goes on sale next month.​

A breakthrough in the field of molecular data storage was recently revealed proving that high volumes of data can effectively be stored in individual molecules. This research could lead to new, high-density data storage systems that potentially hold more than 25 terabytes​ of data per square inch.