In 1956 the world saw its first hard drive, it weighed over a ton and only held 5 Megabytes (MB) of data. Today a typical user has at least 1 terabyte or more in their computer, a terabyte is 1,048,576 MB’s and the hard drives fit in the palm of your hand instead of needing a forklift to move it around.
That’s for the average user though, scientists are pushing the boundaries with where and how they can store data, like using living matter or artificial DNA but this little gem mentioned in the article here has the most potential of actually coming into the market. It can not only store 360 TB on it but it can also do this for 13.8 billion years, even at very high temperatures 350F(176C). Our current hard drives without electricity flowing them will lose about 1{463c70c279fb908728b910a090d44fbe4ae7aabcd875de9c1a518a8c8e2be8bd} of their data a year. Optical discs can range from 25-200 years depending on the type and all of them also depend on the condition. I’m also fairly certain none of them could withstand the high temperatures…