DNA ‘cassette tape’ research hints at petabyte-scale cartridges and multi-century lifespan on paper — petabytes-per-meter density possible, but today it writes at kilobytes per hour

Researchers from the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China have developed a DNA cassette tape drive that functions exactly as one might expect. The experimental setup, published in Science Advances on September 12, is the first working prototype to combine DNA storage with a physical tape-based medium and a compact seekable drive — a clever attempt to merge the longevity of DNA with the scalability of old-school tape libraries.

Data is…