Many of us use flash memory sticks to store files temporarily for a while, but only for a short time. One company can offer something a little special about the last aspect by creating a USB storage device that is rated to hold data for up to 200 years, and the only problem is that it only holds 8,192 bytes of data.

Yes, you read that right. Not 8GB, not 8MB — talking about 8KB of information. This is a handful of pages that are most often in a standard text file. It may seem unusually small capacity, but there's a reason it's so small. Instead of using industry-standard NAND flash for storage, German manufacturer Machdyne chose to use a single ferromagnetic RAM chip (via Tom's hardware).

Ferromagnetic RAM (FRAM or FeRAM for short) is a bit similar to regular RAM, but instead of having billions of small dielectric capacitors inside to store data in the form of a charge, FRAM uses ferroelectric capacitors, which have the big advantage of not having to refresh periodically to hold the charge. It will be. Kept in ideal conditions, the data won't leak for well over a century.

This is considerably longer than a consumer-grade SSD that can be purchased, and you can get 10 years or more of secure data retention even if you use it once and store it safely.

FRAM operates as fast as nand flash, but not as fast as modern DRAM kits. Sounds perfect, it's the downside of FRAM is that very few companies make it and it's quite expensive to produce, compared to flash and DRAM.

Machdyne Blaustahl is not expensive and is only 29.29 euros, but as I say, you only get 8KB of FRAM. Most USB flash drives come in gigabyte-level capacity, so assuming that most of the cost is FRAM chips, the 1GB version of Blaustahl will demand an asking price of less than 400 million euros. So, yeah, you're not going to save a photo, video clip, or important Pdf to it.

However, since 8kb is sufficient to hold passwords and other important fragments of data, its lifetime may be useful for holding important account login details. At the moment, the device does not provide encryption, but Machdyne says it plans to implement support in the future, via open source firmware updates. The device's small circuit board has a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller to manage storage and USB Type-A interface, and a 4MB NOR flash memory to store a built-in text editor. The FRAM can be write-protected via a soldering spot, and if the RP2040 fails or the USB port disappears completely in the distant future, the ferromagnetic RAM chip can be read directly from its contacts.

Now, all I need is to invent something that will help me find countless USB flash drives that I've misplaced over the years. One of them and some Blaustahls and I set for life. My stuff and the drive stuff.