From Magnetic Tape to 10,000 Years: Tape Ark’s Journey with Microsoft Project Silica

5 years ago, Tape Ark performed a Proof of Concept (POC) with Microsoft using its new archiving technology called Project Silica. Since that time, the project has moved in great leaps and bounds.

As part of the POC, Tape Ark wrote its source code onto a Project Silica platter so that it could be preserved for 10,000 years. We did this to ensure that thousands of years from now, the tapes still existed, that the code was available for others to recover important data from.

Now, a new Nature paper showcases the breakthrough in this Silica data storage technology. Across the world, vast amounts of critical data still sit on aging magnetic tape — inaccessible, deteriorating, or simply forgotten.

It is our hopes at Tape Ark, that Project Silica will change that and provide a future proof technology for our valuable history.

At Tape Ark, we focus on unlocking legacy data. Because the future of preservation isn’t one technology — it’s a pipeline:

Legacy media → Cloud → Century-scale archives

For us, it all starts with making legacy data readable again.

Read the original blog post on our collaboration with Microsoft on the trial of Project Silica:

Tape Ark collaborates with Microsoft on new trial for long-term archival storage – Project Silica