Microsoft can now store data for 10,000 years on everyday glass thanks to laser breakthrough
Groundbreaking improvements to Microsoft’s glass data storage technology mean that ordinary glassware, such as that used in kitchenware and oven doors, can store terabytes of data, with that information lasting for 10,000 years.
The technology, in development under the banner “Project Silica” since 2019, has seen constant improvements, and scientists presented the latest innovations today (February 18) in the journal Nature.
In the new study, the team showed that they could encode data on regular borosilicate glass, a type of durable, heat-resistant glass that is often used in glassware found in most kitchens. Previously, scientists could only store data on pure fused silica glass, which is expensive to make and available from only a few sources. They also demonstrated several new techniques for coding and reading data.
“This advance addresses the main obstacles to commercialization: the cost and availability of storage media”, co-author of the study Richard Blackhead of partner research at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We have unveiled the science of high-speed parallel writing and developed a technique to enable accelerated aging testing on written glass, suggesting that the data should remain intact for at least 10,000 years.”
The team packed 4.8 TB of data, the equivalent of about 200 4K movies, onto 301 layers in a piece of glass measuring 0.08 by 4.72 inches (2 by 120 millimeters) at a write speed of 3.13 megabytes per second (MB/s). Although this speed is much slower than the write speed of hard drives (around 160 MB/s) or SSDs (around 7,000 MB/s), scientists have found that data can last for more than 10,000 years. On the other hand, most hard drives and solid state drives last up to about 10 years.
This longevity and stability are the main drivers of innovations such as glass and ceramic based storage devices for primarily archival reasons – rather than for use in most everyday devices. In theory, these alternative storage formats are much more reliable than existing formats and can serve as a long-term repository for the data we generate.
To demonstrate this idea, Microsoft scientists previously presented plans to preserve music around the world. Global Music Vault in Norway. The news also follows another independent breakthrough in DNA storagewith 360 TB of data that can be stored in half a mile (0.8 kilometer) of DNA.
Focused on archival storage
In the study, scientists revealed several discoveries that together made writing and reading on glass more efficient and cost-effective.
First, they detailed progress in a technique called writing birefringent voxels with laser pulses. Birefringence is the phenomenon of double refraction and voxels are the 3D equivalent of 2D pixels. The scientists developed a pseudo-single pulse – an improvement over the previous two pulses – in which one pulse can split after polarization to form the first pulse for one voxel and the second pulse for another.
This has been accompanied by parallel write capabilities, in which many voxels of data can be written at the same time in close proximity, significantly increasing write speed.
The scientists also designed a new type of storage in the form of “phase voxels,” in which data can be encoded in the phase change – the change in phase of a material via changes in energy and pressure – of the glass instead of its polarization, which occurs in birefringent voxels. This is possible with a single pulse, and scientists have also developed a new technique to read the stored data.
Finally, the team found a way to identify aging data storage in the voxels inside the glass. They used this method alongside standard accelerated aging techniques to determine that the data could last more than 10,000 years.
In the future, the team will consider how to improve writing and reading technologies, including ways to improve the lasers that write data to glass storage devices. They will also study different glass compositions to find the ideal material on which to store data in this format.
Chen, F. and Wu, B. (2026). Laser-etched glass tablets can preserve data for millennia. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00286-5
