- Ewigbyte combines optical read/write devices with automated handling for large-scale archiving
- Data is stored on inert media designed to withstand environmental degradation
- Modular architecture allows scaling from petabytes to exabytes within deployments
European startup Ewigbyte has unveiled an exabyte-scale, zero-power archive storage system that enters the same new category as Cerabyte’s ceramic-based data storage technology.
Every company is pursuing long-term, energy-free data retention aimed at hyperscalers, governments and research institutions facing rapid archive growth.
Ewigbyte relies on ultra-stable physical encoding to preserve data for centuries without electricity, cooling or periodic data migration.
Modular architecture and energy-free design
The system is aimed at cold storage applications where access delay is less important than durability, tightness and lower operating costs.
By eliminating standby power and refresh cycles, the company says the platform can lower long-term archiving costs compared to magnetic tape and hard disk systems.
The startup built its architecture around modular storage devices that scale from petabytes to exabytes within a single deployment.
Specialized hardware writes data onto inactive media that resists heat, radiation and environmental degradation.
Once written, the data remains fixed and requires no active management before it is retrieved.
Ewigbyte combines optical read and write devices, robotic handling and automated storage with software that integrates with object storage platforms.
The first media designs are targeting 10 GB per tablet, with data written on both sides and local write and read speeds of around 500 MB/s per main.
Through parallel operation, each machine reaches around 4 GB/s, while the total throughput is scaled across multiple machines.
Planned facilities could run up to 100 machines at once, supporting exabyte-scale deployments.
Ewigbyte positions its system as an alternative to both tape libraries and new solid-state archive concepts.
Although access speeds lag behind conventional enterprise storage, the company claims that most archival data sets see infrequent access and instead require extreme durability, density and minimal operating costs.
This focus makes the platform suitable for scientific records, cultural archives, satellite imagery and long-term regulatory storage.
Cerabyte is pursuing a similar zero-power goal using laser-etched ceramic storage, which reflects growing interest in post-tape archiving technologies.
Ewigbyte hasn’t said whether its media composition or writing methods overlap with ceramic-based designs, limiting direct technical comparison for now.
Other efforts in this area include Microsoft’s Project Silica, which uses laser-encoded quartz glass to store data for decades.
In comparison, SPhotonics focuses on photonics-based multilayer optical media for scalable cold storage.
The broader challenge for all these systems lies in production scale, price per terabytes and ecosystem adoption.
Buyers of archival storage tend to move cautiously, and technologies that claim data retention for centuries often face long validation cycles.
Certification, standardization and retrieval tools will likely determine which platforms gain traction.
As data volumes continue to exceed active storage budgets, zero-power archiving systems are moving from research concepts toward early commercial implementation.
Whether Ewigbyte or Cerabyte will achieve large-scale adoption first remains unclear, but their parallel efforts point to a possible shift away from tape-dominated archive infrastructure.
Via Blocks and files
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