For how long data can last in a hard drive or a USB-drive, 5 or 10 years? This is a question everyone asking...! Recently a technology company Backblaze is trying to answer it, company is running 25000 hard drives simultaneously as any hard drive breath its last the company replaces it and logs its lifespan, while the census has been running 5 years, statistics show a 22% attrition rate(number of items moving out of a collective group over a specific period of time) over 4 years, some drives may last up to a decade and some last just over a year but a short answer is that storage devices don't last forever.
SOLUTION:
Science is now looking at nature for a solution. Researchers at The ETH institute Zurich, Switzerland believe that answer lie in natural data storage system of living cells: THE DNA, So compact and complex that a 1gm can theoretically store all data of TECH Giants like Google, Facebook. In storage terms 1 gm DNA can store 455 exabytes of information and 1 exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes.
DNA is a unique way of nature to store data for centuries in form of fossils.Scientist have succeed in extracting genome of 110,000-year-polar bear and recently a 700,000-year old horse. Robert Grass of Dept. of Chemistry and applied Bio-science said:
"We have found ways of making DNA very stable, So we want to combine high storage density of DNA with stability of DNA found in fossils"
PROBLEM:
It is known that water and oxygen are the enemies of DNA survival, DNA in a test tube & exposed to air will last little more than 2-3 years, but encasing it in glass-an inert,neutral agent and cooling it increases its chances of survival, so storing DNA in cool,dry place is the best.
Dr.Grass Said:"The BEST DNA comes from sources that are ceramic and dry-- so teeth,bone and even egg shells."
THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION(The First 83):
The research team has so far tested their methods and has stored 83 kilobytes of data successfully, which included the First Swiss Federal Charter and The Archimedes Palimpsest.
Dr. Grass said:
"We wanted to preserve these documents to show that the method just not works its important too."
He estimated that this information will be readable up to 10,000 years and if frozen up to a million years.The cost of encoding 83kb data is $2,000, which makes it an expensive procedure but Dr. Grass believes that price will come down with the passage of time and further advancement in technology.
Dr. Gass Said:
"Price of human genome sequencing have dropped from several million dollars to just a few hundred dollars now."
"It makes sense to integrate these advances in medical and genome analysis into the world of IT"
Source:CNN.com .
SOLUTION:
Science is now looking at nature for a solution. Researchers at The ETH institute Zurich, Switzerland believe that answer lie in natural data storage system of living cells: THE DNA, So compact and complex that a 1gm can theoretically store all data of TECH Giants like Google, Facebook. In storage terms 1 gm DNA can store 455 exabytes of information and 1 exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes.
DNA is a unique way of nature to store data for centuries in form of fossils.Scientist have succeed in extracting genome of 110,000-year-polar bear and recently a 700,000-year old horse. Robert Grass of Dept. of Chemistry and applied Bio-science said:
"We have found ways of making DNA very stable, So we want to combine high storage density of DNA with stability of DNA found in fossils"
PROBLEM:
It is known that water and oxygen are the enemies of DNA survival, DNA in a test tube & exposed to air will last little more than 2-3 years, but encasing it in glass-an inert,neutral agent and cooling it increases its chances of survival, so storing DNA in cool,dry place is the best.
Dr.Grass Said:"The BEST DNA comes from sources that are ceramic and dry-- so teeth,bone and even egg shells."
THE FIRST DEMONSTRATION(The First 83):
The research team has so far tested their methods and has stored 83 kilobytes of data successfully, which included the First Swiss Federal Charter and The Archimedes Palimpsest.
Dr. Grass said:
"We wanted to preserve these documents to show that the method just not works its important too."
He estimated that this information will be readable up to 10,000 years and if frozen up to a million years.The cost of encoding 83kb data is $2,000, which makes it an expensive procedure but Dr. Grass believes that price will come down with the passage of time and further advancement in technology.
Dr. Gass Said:
"Price of human genome sequencing have dropped from several million dollars to just a few hundred dollars now."
"It makes sense to integrate these advances in medical and genome analysis into the world of IT"
Source:CNN.com .
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