The quest for sustainable alternatives to disks and tapes

This is blog 6 in the blog series about Green IT.

All around the world, the amount of stored data continues to increase. This raises questions as to how long we can continue storing this information using existing storage methods, such as disks and tapes. At the same time, the search is on for ways to reduce the growing energy use in the IT sector. This blog takes a look at the research world, which sometimes resembles an exciting science fiction film.

Current storage is infinite

In previous blogs on the theme of data storage we saw that the amount of data stored worldwide is steadily increasing. In fact, with the emergence of new technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things (1), this growth will even accelerate. In 2022, the global storage capacity was estimated at 95 zettabytes (ZB), and the prognoses indicate a further increase to 211 zettabytes by 2025. (2)

This estimate refers to different forms of data storage, such as hard disk drives (HDD), solid-state drives (SSD), optical storage and storage on tape (Linear Tape-Open). Although storage capacity continues to grow, this growth is not keeping pace with the production of data. If the amount of data continues to increase at this dizzying pace, storage demand will outstrip storage capacity within a few years. (3)

Ecological impact

Additionally, the ecological impact of data storage is being scrutinised ever more closely. (4) This is motivating organisations to search for storage technologies that use less energy, and thereby to reduce their impact on the environment.

Limited lifespan

The current forms of digital storage have a limited lifespan. Hard disks have a lifespan of approximately five years, while that of tape is generally ten years, on average. So data that we wish to preserve and keep accessible for the long-term needs to be transferred regularly to new storage media.

This not only poses a risk to the integrity of the data, but also creates a large amount of waste, since obsolete disks and tapes usually cannot be reused. The repeated replacement of storage media also entails considerable costs.

Much research into new storage technologies

Several parties, often consisting of commercial tech companies in partnership with research institutes such as (in the Netherlands) Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Eindhoven University of Technology (TU Eindhoven), University of Twente and Radboud University, have conducted research into scalable and more sustainable forms of storage.

Ad van Heijst previously published a blog series on KIA Community on existing and innovative storage technologies for information (5), in which he discussed, among other things, data storage on glass and in synthetic DNA. In this blog series we add a third approach: storage in atoms.

In the next three blogs we’ll be looking into these new storage technologies, with a special focus on their ecological impact. In this respect we deviate from Ad van Heijst’s blog series on storage technologies with a view to Digital Preservation Storage Criteria. Ecological sustainability is not (yet) a part of these criteria.

Sources

(1) The Internet of Things refers to the entirety of devices and equipment that are linked to other equipment or systems via the internet and which exchange information.

(2) IDC, ‘High Data Growth and Modern Applications Drive New Storage Requirements in Digitally Transformed Enterprises: a whitepaper sponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA’, published in July 2022.

(3) TechTarget, ‘The future of data storage must handle heavy volume’, published on 20 December 2022.

(4) In the top 5 data storage trends for 2023, compiled by TechTarget, the ecological impact of storage is identified as an important trend.

(5) Ad van Heijst’s blog series about existing and innovative storage technologies can be found on this platform.