- Ewigbyte combines optical read/write units with automated handling for large-scale archival
- Data is stored on inert media designed to resist environmental degradation
- Modular architecture allows scaling from petabytes to exabytes within deployments
European startup Ewigbyte has unveiled an exabyte-scale, zero-power archival storage system, entering the same emerging category as Cerabyte’s ceramic-based data storage technology.
Each company is pursuing long-term, energy-free data preservation aimed at hyperscalers, governments, and research institutions facing rapid archival growth.
Ewigbyte relies on ultra-stable physical encoding to retain data for centuries without electricity, cooling, or periodic data migration.
Modular architecture and energy-free design
The system targets cold storage use cases where access latency matters less than durability, density, and lower operating costs.
By removing standby power and refresh cycles, the company says the platform can lower long-term archival expenses compared with magnetic tape and hard disk systems.
The startup built its architecture around modular storage units that scale from petabytes to exabytes within a single deployment.
Specialized hardware writes data onto inert media that resists heat, radiation, and environmental degradation.
Once written, the data stays fixed and requires no active management until retrieval.
Ewigbyte combines optical write and read units, robotic handling, and automated storage with software that integrates with object storage platforms.
Initial media designs target 10GB per tablet, with data written on both sides and local write and read speeds of about 500MB/s per head.
Through parallel operation, each machine reaches roughly 4GB/s, while overall throughput scales 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 emerging solid-state archival concepts.
Although access speeds lag conventional enterprise storage, the company argues that most archival datasets see rare access and instead require extreme durability, density, and minimal operating cost.
This focus makes the platform suitable for scientific records, cultural archives, satellite imagery, and long-term regulatory retention.
Cerabyte is pursuing a similar zero-power goal using laser-etched ceramic storage, which reflects growing interest in post-tape archival technologies.
Ewigbyte has not said whether its media composition or write methods overlap with ceramic-based designs, which limits direct technical comparison for now.
Other efforts in this space include Microsoft Project Silica, which uses laser-encoded quartz glass to store data for decades.
SPhotonics, by comparison, focuses on photonics-based multi-layer optical media for scalable cold storage.
The broader challenge for all of these systems lies in manufacturing scale, cost per terabyte, and ecosystem adoption.
Archival storage buyers tend to move cautiously, and technologies that claim multi-century data retention often face long validation cycles.
Certification, standardization, and retrieval tooling will likely decide which platforms gain traction.
As data volumes continue to outpace active storage budgets, zero-power archival systems are moving from research concepts toward early commercial deployment.
Whether Ewigbyte or Cerabyte reaches large-scale adoption first remains unclear, but their parallel efforts point to a possible shift away from tape-dominated archival infrastructure.
Via Blocks & Files
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