Biotechnology and synthetic biology · Experimental cross-disciplinary systems

Long-term data storage media

How do DNA, magnetic tape, glass, solid-state drives and orbital data centres compare on density, lifespan, speed or cost, and deployment stage?

This comparison sets five long-term data storage options side by side, one dimension at a time. The figures come from laboratory results, vendor specifications, company claims and rated product limits, so each cell states its conditions and the type of claim behind it.

Long-term data storage media. Each cell shows a value, how well it is evidenced, and its sources.
OptionDensityAmount of data stored per unit of medium: petabytes per gram of DNA, or terabytes per cartridge, plate or drive.Expected lifespanYears that data is expected to stay readable under stated storage conditions, as claimed by a study, vendor or standard. Not an observed result over decades.Write and read speed or costTransfer speed in MB/s or KB/s, or cost in US dollars per terabyte, as reported. Null where no reliable public figure exists.Deployment stageMost advanced stage reported for the option: laboratory research, pilot, or commercial product.
DNA data storageLaboratory only: 215 petabytes per gram of DNA, reported for the 2017 DNA Fountain study, as summarised on Wikipedia.Demonstrated[2]No reliable public figureNo reliable public figureResearch stage. The 2022 review describes the field as in ongoing research and names slow writing and reading and high cost per byte as remaining challenges.Reported, unverified[1]
Magnetic tapeLTO-10 cartridges hold 30 TB or 40 TB native, up to 75 TB or 100 TB compressed, per the LTO Consortium site.Reported, unverified[3]LTO tape is designed for 15 to 30 years of archival storage. For archives kept longer than six months, the Linear Tape-Open article gives 16 to 25 °C and 20 to 50% relative humidity.Reported, unverified[5]LTO-10 transfer rate of 400 MB/s, per the LTO Consortium site, which does not say whether this is native or compressed. No cost per terabyte is given.Reported, unverified[3]Released in 2025, per the magnetic tape article's chronology. Commercial availability is not stated in the sources opened.Reported, unverified[3][4]
Glass (laser-written) storageMicrosoft states raw capacity upwards of 7 TB in a DVD-sized glass platter. The project page gives no date for this figure.Reported, unverified[6]Microsoft claims lifetimes of tens to hundreds of thousands of years; the page gives no test conditions.Reported, unverified[6]No reliable public figureResearch project. The page describes the technology as in development, with a 2019 proof-of-concept demonstrator and no product release stated.Reported, unverified[6]
Solid-state drivesNo reliable public figureEndurance is rated in terabytes written (TBW). The article's comparison table says drives may lose data unpowered after about 3 months (enterprise) or 1 year (consumer) once rated wear is reached; another passage says one to two years for heavily used consumer drives.Reported, unverified[7]Consumer SSDs as of mid-2026: transfer rates from 500 MB/s (SATA Gen3) to 15,000 MB/s (PCIe NVMe Gen5). The article does not say whether these are read or write rates.Reported, unverified[7]Commercial, mass-market product.Demonstrated[7]
Orbital data centresNo reliable public figureNo reliable public figureNo reliable public figureFlight demonstrations only. Starcloud-1 launched in November 2025 with one NVIDIA H100 GPU; Google's Project Suncatcher prototype confirmed contact on 1 October 2026. Neither source gives numerical performance data.Reported, unverified[8][9]

What the table shows

  • No cell gives a reliable cost per terabyte, so cost cannot be compared across the rows.
  • Density figures for DNA and glass come from research or vendor claims, while tape density is a published cartridge specification.
  • Lifespan figures are design targets, company claims or rated values, not observed results over decades. The glass figure gives no test conditions.
  • Orbital data centres have no comparable density, lifespan or speed figures, and their row is shown for context because they are compute systems rather than archive media.

Read with care

  • The cells mix laboratory results, vendor specifications, company claims and rated product limits, which were not measured on the same basis.
  • Units differ between rows: petabytes per gram for DNA, terabytes per cartridge or plate for tape and glass, and terabytes written for drive endurance.
  • Lifespan figures depend on storage conditions. The DNA review was checked only through its abstract, so its lifespan and cost figures were removed.
  • Several cells are null because no reliable public figure was found in the sources opened, so blank cells mean missing evidence, not poor performance.
  • Seven sources are undated pages (Wikipedia, LTO, Microsoft and Starcloud), so their published_at values are access years, not publication dates.

Sources

  1. review article
    Emerging Approaches to DNA Data Storage: Challenges and Prospects
    Andrea Doricchi, Casey M. Platnich, Andreas Gimpel et al.. ACS Nano, 18 Oct 2022. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  2. other
    DNA digital data storage
    Wikipedia, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  3. other
    Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium
    LTO Consortium, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  4. other
    Magnetic tape data storage
    Wikipedia, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  5. other
    Linear Tape-Open
    Wikipedia, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  6. company announcement
    Project Silica
    Microsoft Research, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  7. other
    Solid-state drive
    Wikipedia, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  8. company announcement
    Starcloud-1 mission page
    Starcloud, 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.
  9. company announcement
    Project Suncatcher prototype satellite update
    Google, 1 Oct 2026. Accessed 21 Oct 2026.