China Achieves Mass Production Breakthrough with 360TB Glass Hard Drives
Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) have achieved small-scale mass production of glass-based hard drives, a breakthrough that could transform enterprise cold data storage. Each glass disc can store a staggering 360 terabytes of data across 400 stacked layers, using laser "carving" technology that writes data into the internal structure of the glass medium.
Let’s say I want to preserve my computer disks when I do a major change (i.e. 10TB worth of NAS or just 4TB worth of workstation) or when I sell it or just throw it away. What do I do? Time is not essential. Or as others said, store photos and other large files. It’s for archival, not for backup purposes.
@Mihies @douglasg14b
Stick the drive in a USB caddy and keep it?
If it’s an array, buy a big one and then repeat from step 1…
That’d work only if I throw the computer away.
@Mihies I honestly don’t see why, no, not at all. If you want to keep the data then you plug the drive into anything else with a USB interface. If you don’t want to keep the data, what’s the problem? Just format it and donate it, whole.
If I do the former, then I need a new disk for the computer if I were to sell it or otherwise keep it functional, don’t I? And disks, especially these days, are not cheap. Plus it doesn’t make much (financial) sense to keep the standard disk just for archival purposes. You are also missing an major upgrade scenario - shall I buy a new disk each time I do an upgrade?