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<h4>I remember many years ago; during my primary school days; there was this particular song I always enjoy listening to. Awesomely enough, my dad got it for me as a birthday gift in a **Tape Cassette**, and I would go around with my portable tape cassette player to listen to it. But as time went by, the cassette player began to wear off, and the song became almost undesirable to listen to, because it would crack and skip. It was many years later that I discovered what had happened - radio cassette is a type of magnetic data storage device, which; of course; has many downsides. Among them is; short life span, linear/sequential data access, and very limited memory capacity. But years after that, quite impressive advancements have been made in data storage, and I wish I had my favourite childhood song in any other media asides tape cassette.</h4>
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### <center><div class=phishy>INTRODUCTION</div></center>
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Since the advent of storage media, advances have been made to improve the format, capacity, and nature of storage devices. During earlier days of computing; in the 20th century; the storage medium then was "punch card", which was capable of just storing few characters. Even though it would suffice more as a programmable paper than a storage medium - Because something having a memory capacity of just some few bytes is totally heart-breaking in this era of astronomical data consumption. But over time, some more viable storage media came on-board, and that was how we knew about optical discs, flash disc, etc. But majorly, in this recent past, the storage media that made waves were silicon chip-based, but as it were, another leap has been achieved in the field of data storage, and we would be looking at the future of data storage (we'll be looking at 2 storage media with very promising future, and maybe we'll be taking the rest later).

<center>http://i.imgur.com/aToahjx.jpg</center>

<center><sub>[Some popular storage media. From [Wikimedi Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Evolution_of_Data_Storage.jpg). Author: Diptangshudatta. [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) Licensed]</sub></center>

To make something pretty clearer here: as the day goes by, the roll-out of data increases. Maybe this figure might give you a little insight: [An IBM analysis on data creation](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/insights-on-business/consumer-products/2-5-quintillion-bytes-of-data-created-every-day-how-does-cpg-retail-manage-it/) indicated that just in the year 2012 alone, an average of 2.5exabytes of data were rolled out on a daily basis. Remember, this was 2012; before the advances in Internet of Things, Big data systems, Smart city frameworks, Artificial Intelligence and whatnot, so imagine what the current data creation would be. And judging from the fact that a vast majority (over 90%) of the world's data were created in the last two years <sub>[[ref](https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291358/90-of-todays-data-created-in-two-years.html)]</sub> - That means the 2.5exabytes of data would've been a child's play compared to what is being produced today. But to give you an insight of this: 2.5exabytes = 2.5million terabytes = 2.5 quintillion bytes. 

To buttress some points to you: You would agree with me that when you got your first mobile phone, it didn't have a memory card compartment, but you were very okay with it, and you probably didn't even exhaust the internal memory which was about a few kilobytes or megabytes in capacity. But now, with your smartphones having large internal memory, you would still need external memory card, and yet it wouldn't be enough to store the amount of data you generate. Imagine what would happen in the future of Cray-supercomputing. That is why we need a more viable data storage media - Here, we'll be looking at them.

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### <center><div class=phishy>1.  5D GLASS DATA STORAGE</div></center>
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<div class="pull-right"><center>http://i.imgur.com/hAV7WoM.jpg<sub><a href=https://youtu.be/QlfsSGT4Sfk>Sample of 5D glass storage media. Image taken from a screenshot of YouTube video by N2K. Taken at the 9th second mark</a></sub></center></div>

I'm sure y'all have seen and have used an optical disc (your conventional CDs and stuffs). But as it were, there are obvious limitations with them. First of all, the usability deteriorates with the passage of time, it is also susceptible to damages from temperature changes, also the memory capacity of CD is about 700mb, though the DVD can go as much as 4.7GB, and much more with the Blu-Ray disc, but none of them has been known to store up to 100GB. But hey!! Another option has arisen; and that is the 5-Dimensional glass disc storage. Now someone might be piqued to ask "what's the durability of this disc?". Well, I'll start with this question: What do you think is the age of the earth? Okay maybe 4.5billion years. But what if I told you that this disc can hold data for 2X the age of the earth? Yes you heard right; [an analysis by the university of Southampton](https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page) has proven that this disc can be usable for up to 13.8billion years. Which means, if a copy was produced together when the earth was formed, you can still use it today.

Also, asides the durability of data content and the disc itself, the disc can store an excess of 300Terrabytes of data, and can withstand insane temperature of up to 190<sup>o</sup>C, which would make your regular CD to be damaged badly. The same publication I cited above also made some assertions that the glass disc can withstand as much as a whopping 1000<sup>o</sup>C. So how is this possible? As against the normal conventional discs we know that writes information on the outside surface (which can be prone to wear, scratch and whatnot), the 5D glass storage writes data directly into very tiny dots (microdots) embedded right inside the glass - and as such, would be able to stand the test of time. And of course, y'all are aware that plastic discs are not as strong as glass. To write data onto the glass, laser beams of high speed are used to create strong light pulses striking against the microdots embedded within the glass - thus, changing the nature of the dots to assemble the information within the glass disc. Maybe you can take a quick peek into this video to have a little insight of how files are written onto the disc.
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<center>https://youtu.be/QlfsSGT4Sfk</center>

<center><sub>[Writing Files into the 5D glass disc. Video credit: N2K]</sub></center>

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### <center><div class=phishy>2. DNA DATA STORAGE</div></center>
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<div class="pull-left"><center>http://i.imgur.com/Hsx7onm.jpg<sub><a href=https://pixabay.com/en/dna-strand-helicoid-biology-3301568>DNA can also store digital data. Image from Pixabay. CC0 Licensed</a></sub></center></div>


Y'all are aware that DNA stores biological information right? But what if I told you that it can store some other types of data, like digital information, would you believe me? Okay the truth is; advances in the 21st century have gone way beyond just technology, and has also incorporated biology into it. The idea of storing pieces of information on strands of DNA has been age-long, but the procedures to do this have been left in the grey zone. In the 1980s, one of the best attempts then was the encoding of few kilobytes of data in DNA, but that was way below the capacity of what DNA storage can hold. 

A renowned professor of genetics; George Church, who was also recognized as the co-inventor of the "Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat" (CRISPR), [has asserted that a single stand of DNA has the ability of storing information immutably for a VERY long time](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf). But not just that, a single strand of DNA has the propensity of storing a whopping 2.2petabytes of data (that's 2.2million gigabytes). Remember what I told you in the beginning about the data roll-over rate being in the tune of 2.5exabytes; now it looks like this form of storage medium would provide answer to it. As the days go by, advances are being made in DNA computing. As a matter of fact, in 2017, some group of research scientists from Harvard made a milestone achievement when they encoded some multimedia files in DNA, and they stated that the file can remain immutable for millennia <sub>[[ref](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jul/12/scientists-pioneer-a-new-revolution-in-biology-by-embeding-film-on-dna)]</sub>.

Come to think of this; advances in 21st century have shifted focus into miniaturization of technological devices. For example; one of the world's first hard disk, the 305 RAMAC, had a weight of over 1ton, and only had a memory capacity of just 5mb. Imagine a hard disk that would fill an entire room, but can't even save a HD picture file. But now, your laptop hard disk weighs just some few pounds, but some can store up to 1terrabyte of data. This is to prove to you that the focus now is miniaturization. And if this is the trend, then I might just tell y'all that DNA computing would provide an answer to it. This is because; just 1gram of DNA storage can store up an excess of 455exabytes of data <sub>[[ref](https://scitechdaily.com/dna-storage-record-broken-1-gram-could-hold-as-much-as-455-exabytes/)]</sub>. That means, you can squeeze up all the currently available data in the entire world in just a few kilograms of DNA. Here's a little tip to amaze you: [Carverr inc](https://www.carverr.com) `has set up an infrastructure that would allow people to save their` ***Bitcoin Passwords*** `in synthetic DNA` <sub>[[ref](https://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-fanatics-are-storing-their-cryptocurrency-passwords-in-dna-carverr/)]</sub> - maybe that's the future and secure way of storing your digital currency. Okay some would say; "why not save the passwords in a paper or some flash disk?" Well, you should know that one tech can change and another can become obsolete, but DNA would definitely stick around for a while: Of course, we're all composed of DNA right? You wanna see a sample of how a DNA vial that contains digital currency looks like? Take a look at this YouTube video.
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<center>https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PvI_nzBU6MA&t=94s</center>

<center><sub>[Storing your digital currency in DNA. Video Credit: Bridget - Cnet]</sub></center>

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But currently; and as the other emerging technologies; this storage medium has some obvious downsides. Just like in the 5D glass storage, the DNA storage is extremely expensive to implement at the moment - well, that's understandable because this technology has not yet been available on commercial scale - that is why it has only been limited to research purposes at the moment. Okay come to think of this; how many families can afford some thousand dollars 5D glass disc player or a DNA storage decoder? Now you understand what I mean? But asides this, writing data onto DNA strands has been considered a very slow process, but this does not rule-off the fact that; with further advances; this technology might go mainstream. Let's keep our hopes alive.

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### <center><div class=phishy>FINAL WORDS</div></center>
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The world of data storage has been such that has been experiencing updates lately, and this updates are necessitated by the fact that each day, the roll-out of data keeps increasing, so we would need something to stored them, and to prevent data overload. We have considered two very promising storages media; the 5D glass and the DNA storage; which is set to revolutionize the field of data storage with insane memory capacity and durability. Very soon, we might achieve a device that can save your data literarily eternally.
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***Thanks for reading***

> References for further reading

- [5D glass Storage can store data almost eternally - Southampton University](https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page)
- [The verge - Storing data in 5D glass](https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11018018/5d-data-storage-glass)
- [DNA - The digital information storage, but professor George Church.pdf](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf)
- [Memory capacity of DNA storage](https://scitechdaily.com/dna-storage-record-broken-1-gram-could-hold-as-much-as-455-exabytes/)
- [DNA storage, the future of data storage - nature.com](https://www.nature.com/news/how-dna-could-store-all-the-world-s-data-1.20496)
- [Data generated on a daily basis](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/05/21/how-much-data-do-we-create-every-day-the-mind-blowing-stats-everyone-should-read/)
- [Storing cryptocurrency in DNA - the future of digital currency security](https://www.cnet.com/news/bitcoin-fanatics-are-storing-their-cryptocurrency-passwords-in-dna-carverr)


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