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Data size is increasing at an alarming rate and the need for safe ways to store all that information is the need of the hour. This is why the researchers from University of Southampton have created a solution that could change the whole storage industry.

University of Southampton scientists revealed on Thursday in United Kingdom that they made a huge breakthrough that will revolutionize storage. They developed a small 5D (5-dimensional) disc which can not only save up to 360TB data but also preserve our information safely for billions of years.

Professor Peter Kazansky and his team from the Optoelectronics Research Center of the University said that the storage disc has a huge capacity and can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000c and an infinite lifetime at the room temperature. This can help the disc to preserve the information for as long as 14 billion years, says ZDnet.com

The storage disc is made of nanostructured glass and the data is recorded as well as retrieved in a 5D format with the help of lasers that write in a time measurement equal to one quadrillionth of a second, known as femtosecond. The deep light in short tiny bursts is used to write information to the disc in 3 layers. Each of these layers is separated by only 5 micrometers and are made up of nanostructured dots. "As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organizations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records," the team says.

The university started to demonstrate the capability of this technology in 2013 when a small file of 300kb was digitally copied on 5D successfully. Now the scientists have also copied some of the most influential documents such as Magna Carta, King James Bible etc. to demonstrate its abilities, as reported by ZDnet.com