The 10,000-year hard drive: Microsoft’s new breakthrough uses glass to store data forever | Technology News
4 min readNew DelhiFeb 24, 2026 08:01 PM IST The world is producing more digital information than ever before. Whether it is photos, emails, scientific research, or artificial intelligence models, the amount of data being created each year is increasing. As AI systems demand even larger datasets, the pressure on storage technologies is increasing fast. Now, researchers at Microsoft say they may have found a way to store data that could last not just decades, but thousands of years inside glass. The breakthrough comes from the company’s research division, known as Project Silica. The team has developed a method that uses ultra-fast lasers to write data within solid pieces of glass. According to the researchers, the information stored this way could remain intact for up to 10,000 years. Traditional storage devices, like hard drives, magnetic tapes, and even solid-state drives, don’t last forever. Over time, they degrade. This process, sometimes referred to as data rot, means information must be copied and transferred every few years to avoid permanent loss. Richard Black, research director at Project …
