- Fujifilm and Twist Bioscience have sponsored a whitepaper regarding the upcoming possible data storage shortage by 2030.
- The Escalating Challenge of Preserving Enterprise Data report states that the storage devices production might not be able to keep up with the demand.
- Fujifilm and Twist Bioscience think that DNA and tape storage will be the key technologies if that happens.
As the internet became capable of carrying large chunks of data quickly, we, as humans, decided to gather all kinds of data and store them; some of which will never be useful again. The planet itself became a “data hoarder” and we are looking for ways to make it more efficient. Fujifilm and Twist Bioscience have prepared a report named The Escalating Challenge of Preserving Enterprise Data which highlights the possible upcoming shortage in storage devices by 2030.
Adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine
Currently, most of the data is stored on SSDs, HDDs, and tapes. All of them have their own advantages and disadvantages compared to each other. While we are currently seeing the SSDs as the best way to store data, they have their shortcomings as well; most notably durability and cost.
Fujifilm and Twist Bioscience’s report states that they estimate about a 7.87 zettabyte storage gap between overall storage demand and production in 2030. The report suggests tape storage (Fujifilm’s business) will be the savior for cold storage alongside DNA storage (Twist Bioscience’s business) solutions. DNA storage is a very, very dense solution that can currently store 215 petabytes of data in one gram of it. However, the machine that can write A-T and G-C combinations as 1’s and 0’s to a DNA will be way bigger than that, which is shown in the picture below:
Standardization on the way
DNA storage is an interesting topic since it is a completely new technology and promises to deliver an incredible amount of storage capacity as an incredibly high-density solution. The DNA Data Storage Alliance is currently pushing forward to standardize the new technology to speed up its development but it is not clear if it will be commercially viable until 2030.
DNA storage is not the only technology that promises super-dense data storage. Holographic data storage system (HDSS) devices were once similarly introduced as DNA storage many years ago. However, we are yet to see a fully functioning device.