In China, glass-based next-generation storage technology has entered the small-scale mass production phase. According to the statement made by Hubei Optics Valley Laboratory, the domestic glass hard disk developed by the Zhang Jingyu team from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and industrialized by Wuhan Yiyao Technology has been put into production. The announced system was prepared for high-density and very long-lasting data archiving.
Glass hard disk from China that stores data for 100 thousand years. The new storage medium consists of a round high-purity fused quartz glass disk with a diameter of 12 cm and a thickness of 2 mm. The maximum capacity of a single disk was announced as 360 TB. According to the calculation given, this capacity corresponds to approximately 25 thousand high-definition movies. On the storage density side, it was stated that the glass disc offers 10 thousand times higher density than Blu-ray discs.
At the heart of the system is femtosecond laser-based 5D multidimensional optical storage technology. Data is recorded over approximately 400 data layers etched vertically into the internal structure of the glass. Double coding is used in the storage structure via birefringence voxel and phase voxel. In the statement, it was also shared that the entire industrial chain is 100 percent domestic. One of the most striking aspects of the glass hard disk was its data storage life.
According to the shared information, the theoretical data protection period of the disk is over 100 thousand years. The storage medium withstands high temperatures up to 290 degrees, is resistant to water and is not affected by electromagnetic interference. It was also announced that the disk does not require an electrical connection for long-term data storage. This structure stands out especially in cold data archiving.
According to the information conveyed in the news, the media cost is only one tenth of traditional storage solutions. Therefore, technology; It is positioned as a storage infrastructure that can be used for state archives, scientific data centers, corporate backup systems, financial records, health data and large-scale digital archives that need to be preserved for a long time. The first technical values on the reading and writing performance side were also shared.
In the current version, the writing speed is in the range of 8-10 MB/s, and the reading speed is in the range of 50-200 MB/s. The main operating mode of the system is based on WORM, that is, a write-once structure. Data cannot be physically deleted or modified. This feature provides a distinct advantage for data storage scenarios with high security levels. Glass-based storage technology has a different usage area than classical hard disks, SSDs and optical disks.
The main priority here is not high speed, but very high data density, long-term durability and immutable record structure. For this reason, the technology is evaluated in the field of long-term archiving rather than daily computer use or consumer electronics.
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