[stanac]

It doesn't have to be consumer hardware to be economically viable. I can imagine something like this replacing or complementing tape storage at data centers. We already have hard drives filled with gas for dust-proofing. For archival storage it does not have to be fast (in terms of latency) it just needs to be reliable with high data density.

Hard drives where the size of a car decades ago, we could now have archival storage of the same physical size that can hold petabytes (just guessing, didn't do the actual math).

[fragmede]

The question is how much are readers. If I have to take my data to my local strip mall to write my datacube, but this data cube can be read with a much cheaper reader that I can reasonably believe will be available in 40 years, I could see that as being viable.

[jmpman]

I believe the helium in the hard drives allows the heads to fly closer to the platter due to the different Reynolds number, not dust.