Tape, Glass, And Molecules – The Future Of Archival Storage
12th June 2025
The function of archival storage is to keep data for the long term – decades and beyond – reliably and affordably. Currently, the main medium for this is LTO tape and it is slow, has a limited life, and not enough capacity considering the implications of ever-increasing image and video resolution and AI-infused data generation. However, there is as yet no viable tape replacement technology at scale, only possibilities, with optical storage more practical and nearer to productization than DNA or other molecular storage.