Yes, a BILLION years. Sound far fetched? Futuristic technology? Not quite. Scientific researchers have been able to demonstrate data storage memory utilzing carbon nano tubes. The technology can store, in theory, a trillion bits of data per square inch for a billion years. The technology potentially will be available in 2 years. It uses crystalline iron nano particles inside a specialized carbon tube to work it’s magic. To put that in perspective the particles are a fraction of the width of a human hair, that’s damn tiny. On top of that it’s low voltage and energy efficient.
Perhaps the days of hard drive crashes will soon be over. No more headaches, no more data recovery issues to deal with. It’s all smoke and mirrors at this point with little or no consumer level application but maybe it will show up in a secret government labs somewhere. There has always been a big gap between theory and real world application.