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Microsoft Research pioneers ultra-durable glass-based data storage for 10,000-year archival solutions.
Microsoft Research has recently revealed a massive advancement in long-term digital storage, describing a technique that can successfully retain data for a period of 10,000 years. This breakthrough was published in the journal Nature on February 18, 2026, and this innovation further enhances the glass storage solution of Project Silica by incorporating borosilicate glass, which is a very affordable and accessible material.
This innovation makes it possible to store data in common borosilicate glass through the use of femtosecond laser pulses, making it possible to replace the earlier expensive fused silica. The team has also made improvements in the reading and writing process, reducing the need for cameras from three to one and incorporating phase voxel technology to encode data faster. Simultaneous writing through a multi-beam system makes it possible to write multiple data points at the same time, making the process much faster.
“Storing data in glass using femtosecond laser pulses is one of the only technologies that can provide durable, immutable, and long-lived storage,” observed the Microsoft Research team. They stressed that the integration of accelerated aging tests and machine learning-based symbol encoding provides data integrity over a period of millennia. “We have developed ways to optimize error correction and ensure successful reading even after thousands of years,” they added, underscoring the feasibility of this technology for ultra-durable digital storage media.
This technology, developed after years of research from Project Silica, is poised to be a paradigm shift in archival storage solutions, going beyond the conventional magnetic and solid-state drives. Microsoft is poised to position glass media as a frontrunner in the storage of critical data over the coming generations. Further developments on this front are expected later in 2026.
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