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What Will the Digital Storage Devices of the Future Be?

Data storage for instance is still a little naive and in its infancy. However, this industry can ill-afford to be amateurish, given the looming demands of ever increasing data. And that’s not all; there’s also the threat to data security that makes the need for storage efficiency that much more crucial.

It is regrettable that our storage devices are so crude; they may well lose their utility in the years ahead, if they don’t progress to meet the advancing data storage requirements of the day.

What is Wrong with Existing Storage Media

The storage media that we are using at present are primarily mechanical (Hard Drives), magnetic (Tapes), optical (CDs and DVDs) or electronic (USB Flash Drives) in their origin. Though at present their storage capacity seems to be immense, yet, all of us know that it cannot be enhanced beyond a certain limit. In fact they are realistically expected to reach their maximum capacity in the next two decades.

Not only is data being generated at an exponential pace, but the latest legal regulations make it mandatory for corporate concerns, to save and archive vast amounts of data for longer periods of time. Needless to say, the capacity of our contemporary storage devices pathetically falls short of the projected requirements.

The second concern that is compelling research and development in data storage is the frustratingly slow speed facilitated by the existing storage media. The data processing and retrieval time offered by today’s magnetic and optical media is soon going to be insufficient for the fast new processors that are going to be developed in the next few years.

Also, the latest endeavors in the field of space research, meteorology, nuclear energy, aerodynamics, nano technology, etc. require an unprecedented speed for data processing and access that is beyond the scope of old media. Thus the next quantum leap for our civilization in the arena of scientific progress is efficient storage media.

Latest Approaches in Storage Media

Nearly all the storage devices of the past, be it tapes, hard drives or CDs, unexceptionally store data on the surface of their constituent material. We know that digital data can only be saved in binary notation i.e. in a sequence of 0s and 1s. Hence, any natural or invented process that can imitate this binary sequence is ideally suitable for the purposes of data storage.

Hard drives cater to this requirement with the aid of a magnetic coating on the surface of their platters whereas CDs rely on a sequence of pits and bumps. The unique thing about the latest research is that it tends to exploit the density or volume of the recording medium to store data rather then being confined to its mere surface. Holographic memory, molecular memory and MRAM chips define this new line of research. Let’s examine each of these in the paragraphs below:

Holographic Memory

Holographic memory is basically an optical technology like CDs and DVDs. It uses a split blue-green argon laser to save data in the form of holograms in various parts of a lithium-niobate crystal or a photopolymer. Allowing for three-dimensional data storage, holographic memory can store tons of data in a small space and allows for a very fast speed of data processing.

The potential of this technology can be estimated by the fact that it allows for the storage of one terabyte (TB) of data in a crystal of the size of a sugar cube. This happens to be more than the storage capacity of approximately 1,000 CDs. With minor adjustments and alignments, the first holographic memory device is expected to be out in the next few years.

Molecular Memory

Molecular memory is electronics taken to a molecular level. This technology is still at a nascent stage. It aspires to store data in the individual molecules of a storage medium. Once developed, it will practically make it possible to manufacture very powerful and cheap computers. Researchers expect to initially create a storage capacity of 100GB into a chip of a size of nearly one square centimeter. A practically working model is expected to be released in the next nine or ten years.

MRAM Chips

MRAM chip is a technology that stores data in an array of micro cells of opposite polarity over a chip. The work on this innovation began in 1990s. It is basically a non-volatile computer memory. MRAM chips are expected to offer a very high speed and a massive storage capacity. Currently the efforts are on to enhance the scope and affordability of this technology.

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James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk

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