Scientists at the European Bioinformatics Institute successfully encoded several different file formats onto strands of synthetic DNA, which were then sent to an American lab and sequenced to extract the data. Selections included Shakespeare, audio of Dr. Martin Luther King, and photos of their lab. If the idea sounds vaguely familiar, you've probably been reading Dresden Codak.
posted by BZArcher on Jan 24, 2013 - 23 comments

Is the Moon a Good Place to store your Data? A company called TransOrbital of La Jolla, Calif., is seriously considering the idea of putting storage facilities on Earth's only natural satellite.
posted by randomnfactor on Jul 23, 2003 - 11 comments

IBM has developed a new storage technology called Millepede which has more in common with old-school punch cards than it does with magnetic hard drives. The system uses a tiny heated sensor to mark a thin polymer layer, and can already store 400 gigabytes per square inch. And it will improve. Will we ever have enough important information to fill up such ridiculous amounts of space?
posted by sixfoot6 on Feb 10, 2000 - 4 comments