Technology, Data | featured news

With the reams of digital data we’re creating, there’s an immense potential for DNA to be a stable, long-term archive for ordinary information, such as photographs, books, financial records, medical files, and videos—all of which today are stored as computer code on fallible, power-hungry storage devices that, unlike DNA, become obsolete.

I have a hard drive with valuable information on it, but I can't seem to access it — the drive is either damaged or erased. Is there any way I can see what's on the drive and get it off?

If you don't have an up-to-date backup of your important data, then this tale of woe should encourage you to make one over the weekend. A couple of weeks ago I reported the story of Matt Honan. He's a smart guy and former journalist for Gizmodo and former contributing editor to WIRED magazine.

For the past decade, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been moving the data from his brain onto computers -- where he knows it will be safe.