I don’t know how many people are going to need a product like the Nanoform, a sapphire disk where you can have any data laser-engraved for posterity. If you have photos, documents, and any similar stuff you’d like to guarantee will live through the worst apocalypse scenarios, though, this record-keeping disk is exactly the place where you would want those things captured.
Made by Fahrenheit 2451, the disc is being billed as “the only storage medium that resists fire, water, and time.” And we can’t argue. The darn thing is virtually unalterable, so unless you lose it, you can use it to access any stored information for the rest of your lifetime (and, possibly, your future generations’ lifetimes, too), long after your printed documents have browned, your USB drives have died, and the cloud service where you held all your data got hacked.
Similar to microfilms, each Nanoform stores your data in a tiny size (1/30,000th scale), allowing you to cram a good load of texts and pictures in a single disk. How much content? According to the company, up to 10,000 letter pages at 150 dpi or 2,700 650 x 850 pictures. All the data is laser-engraved onto the disk, arranged according to your preferences, with retrieval easily achieved by putting it under a microscope, reading it using a powerful magnifying glass, or digitizing it with a high-resolution scanner. You can also take an up-close picture and blow it up on a computer.
It comes in three sizes: a 1-inch diameter disk, a 2-incher, and a 4-incher, with the latter looking like a transparent CD, of sorts. Each one comes with an accompanying transparent, shock-resistant case.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Nanoform. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at €130.