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Crystal storage is not a new concept. In short, it is a new type of storage made of silicate sand and comes with the highest data density in a small area that is capable of storing as much as 360TB of data in a single five-inch wide crystal.
Recently, a research group from the University of Southampton in the UK led by Peter Kazansky has managed to map the entire human genome sequence into a crystal storage using laser light.
This was successfully done with the help of technology from the science and DNA technology development company, Helixworks Technologies, and has been tested for durability, where it can withstand pressure of up to 10 tons per square centimeter and temperatures as high as 1000 degrees Celsius without having to worry about data loss.
The name 5D on this storage does not mean that two new dimensions have been discovered to allow this crystal storage to store more data. For example, a compact disc stores data in a single surface layer that is seen as a two-dimensional "surface". For DVD and Blu-ray, the data is stored in the same type of surface, but comes in a "layered" design, which gives it a third dimension to store more data.
For this crystal storage, the concept of birefringence or birefringence is used, where the light refracted in the crystal is divided into two different waves. The two "light" waves used allow more data to be stored in one type of storage, even though it is present in a small physical size.
In the meantime, each notch that stores data in this crystal storage can store as much as 1 byte of data, compared to one bit of data in one notch for normal optical storage only.
Technically this type of storage is not really necessary, especially because its use is very limited. But with this, it seems we can find a middle ground to get a more compact storage, can hold a lot of data and last longer.