Scientists Create DNA Hard Drives With 700 Terabytes Of Storage

(Photo : Getty Images/Mario Tama) Scientists have developed a digital storage solution capable of holding 700 terabytes of files -- all contained within a tiny thread of artificial DNA.

Scientists have developed a digital storage solution capable of holding 700 terabytes of files -- all contained within a tiny thread of artificial DNA.

The technology, which was developed by scientists from the University of Washington, can store data in a small thread of DNA that is almost invisible to the naked eye, writes Nature World News.

In theory, companies could store digital data that would currently take up warehouses of space, all in a space the size of a sugar cube.

"Life has produced this fantastic molecule called DNA that efficiently stores all kinds of information about your genes and how a living system works -- it's very, very compact and very durable," co-author Luis Ceze, UW associate professor of computer science and engineering, said in a press release.

"We're essentially repurposing it to store digital data -- pictures, videos, documents -- in a manageable way for hundreds or thousands of years," he added.

According to experts, all the data contained in our computer files, photo collections, digital mobile devices and information collected by business and agencies is projected to hit 44 trillion gigabytes by the year 2020.
Much of this information will not need to be stored -- however, the world is still producing data much faster than our current ability to store it.

Researchers from the Molecular Information Systems Lab in the University of Washington and Microsoft said that in order to store data, it is first "chopped into pieces," and stored by "synthesizing a massive number of tiny DNA molecules." The molecules are then dehydrated or preserved to ensure that they can be stored for long periods of time.

Data can then be accessed using DNA sequencing techniques. This is the process by which data is "read" by converting it back to an image, video or document file. These are then correlated with a street address to reorganize the data.

The main obstacle halting further development of this storage technique is the cost associated with creating artificial DNA.

"Specifically, researchers in the U.K. estimated recently that it would cost more than $12,000 per MB to encode DNA data, but only around $200 per MB to read that data back," Dr. Spike Narayan, director of Science and Technology at IBM, told Popular Science.

"The hope is that the techniques for writing DNA will catch up with the amazing progress that is happening in technology to sequence or read DNA," he added. "Until there is greater demand, it will be many years until we see greater technological adoption due to cost factors."

Despite the setbacks, scientists are optimistic that this data storage technology will yet reach its full potential.