Western Digital is investing in Cerabyte, the company behind groundbreaking ceramic hard drive technology that promises a 5,000 year lifespan.

SSDs may be the popular option for laptops and desktops, but traditional hard drives (HDDs) are still the default for long-term storage and many enterprise applications. Unfortunately, traditional HDDs have weaknesses of their own, such as susceptibility to data contamination from exposure to magnetic fields. The company also claims to be able to reduce data storage costs by 75%.

Cerabyte has been developing a ceramic storage method that solves many of the issues with traditional HDDs, while simultaneously expanding the storage lifespan. According to Tom’s Hardware, the company boiled on of their HDDs in salt water before grilling it in a pizza oven, with the data on the drive reamining “100% intact.”

Western Digital sees an opportunity, investing in the company to help further the technology. The partnership is not entirely surprising, given that Cerbyte President Steffen Hellmold spent eight years as a Western Digital VP.

“We are looking forward to working with Cerabyte to formulate a technology partnership for the commercialization of this technology,” said Shantnu Sharma, Western Digital’s Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, via Blocks & Files. “Our investment in Cerabyte aligns with our priority of extending the reach of our products further into long-term data storage use cases.”

“Our ceramic data storage offers a vital, complementary long-term data storage layer that ensures rapid data retrieval – often within seconds – unlocking new revenue streams,” said CEO and co-founder Christian Pflaum. “We are excited to be working with Western Digital to define a technology partnership, fueling our ability to deliver accessible permanent storage solutions at scale.”

“It was previously thought only DNA storage could develop to store exabytes per rack,” added Hellmold. “But Cerabyte can scale there as well.”

Working with Western Digital could be exactly what Cerabyte needs to take their technology to the next level.