The researchers evaluated laser pulses at a variety of power levels, finding a level that sped up writing without damaging the silica glass disc. The study reported a maximum data rate of one million voxels per second, but each bit requires several voxels in 5D optical systems. That works out to a data rate of about 230 kilobytes per second. At that point, it becomes feasible to fill one of the discs, which have an estimated capacity of 500TB. It would take about two months to write this much data, after which it cannot be changed.
This work is still in the early stages, but the team managed to write and retrieve 5GB of text data using a 5D optical medium. All you need to read the stored data is a microscope and polarizer, and it should be readable for eons. We might not have anything interesting enough that needs to be saved for a few billion years, but maybe we will someday.
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