Here at 24 Hour Data, we often consider ourselves doctors for our customers’ data storage devices; we take “sick” (that is, crashed, damaged or virus-infected) hard drives, solid state drives, and RAID arrays, recover lost data, and make them “well.” As a side effect, we reduce our customers’ stress, help lower their blood pressure, and we like to think we’ve prevented more than a few anxiety attacks caused by potential lost data.

But that’s where the analogy ended… until recently. 

Researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) says they’ve developed a way to store data in man-made, DNA-like strands. This DNA storage doesn’t require any power and, unlike a hard disk drive which can wear out, causing a data recovery emergency, DNA storage may last tens of thousands of years. Nothing else on the market approaches the storage capacity, either; a report at TechRadar.com http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/storage/scientists… says users could store 100 million hours of HD video in a cup of DNA. 

The drawback right now, as is so often the case with new technology developments, is the price. But researchers say that synthesizing NA from encoded information could become affordable within the next 10 years. 

We’re not sure what exactly could go wrong with data encoded on DNA-like strands. But we’ve seen data storage materials and storage devices come and go, and evolve, over the years here at 24 Hour Data. We’re sure, no matter where businesses and individuals are storing their data, there will always be a chance of data loss and data recovery professionals will be needed to recover that data. 

In the next few decades, when we think our data recovery specialists as “data doctors,” that name may be even closer to the truth.