GGGQEP

The following is a theoretical data storage method that untilizes a sythetic crystal called "GGG" or "Gadolinium Gallium Garnet". It is manufactured as a diamond sythetic, and is derived from "Gadolinium Gallium Oxide". These are transparent crystaline solids with a high hardness and density. With 3 powerful lasers, you burn out a point within the crystal, and with a scanning device... read data from it. You can only read and write; you cannot delete or rewrite the data.

Gd3Ga5O12 - Gadolinium Gallium Oxide
12024-36-1
Gd3Ga3O12 - Gadolinium Gallium Garnet
Hardness 6.5
Density 7.08 g/cm
Refraction Index 1.970 (+.060)
Gd - 471.75
Ga - 209.169
O - 191.9928
Total Molecular Weight of - 872.9118 atm
1 Mol = 872.9118 grams of crystal at a density of 7.08g/cm yields appoximately 123.29cm^3
cubic root of 123.29cm^3 = 4.977095
A 5cm x 5cm x 5cm cube... that works out JUST fine.
Data storage by a perfect cube is measured at:
n^3
-------
(2n-1)^3
n = mol h/l/w bits  total molecules ratio of bits to molecules
1      1     27     3.7037037037
2      8     125    6.4000000000
3      27    343    7.8717201166
4      64    729    8.7791495199
5      125   1331   9.3914350113
6      216   2197   9.8315885298
7      343   3375   10.1629629630
8      512   4913   10.4213311622
9      729   6859   10.6283714827
10     1000  9261   10.7979699816
11     1331  12167  10.9394263171
12     1728  15625  11.0592000000
13     2197  19683  11.1619163745
14     2744  24389  11.2509737997
15     3375  29791  11.3289248431
16     4096  35937  11.3977237944
17     4913  42875  11.4588921283
18     5832  50653  11.5136319665
19     6859  59319  11.5629056457
10000  1000000000000 8001200060001 12.4981251875
42210000 7.52E+022 6.02E+023 12.4999995558

This shows that roughly 12.5% or 1/8 of the molecules can be stored as bits.
7.52E+022 bits to exabytes = 8153.20034 exabytes
exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes

This is equal to saving 192 million copies of every book every written or about 16 Internets.
Google processes 8 exabytes of data every year.

As of March 2010, the global monthly Internet traffic is estimated to be 21 exabytes.
As of May 2009, the size of the World's total Digital content has been roughly estimated to be 500 billion gigabytes, or 500 exabytes.

According to an IDC paper sponsored by EMC Corporation, 161 exabytes of data were created in 2006, "3 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written," with the number expected to hit 988 exabytes in 2010.

According to CSIRO, in the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 petabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The array is thus expected to generate approximately one exabyte every four days of operation. According to IBM, the new SKA telescope initiative will generate over an exabyte of data every day. IBM is designing hardware to process this information.

According to the June 2009 update of the Cisco Visual Networking Index IP traffic forecast, by 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte or 667 exabytes. Internet video will generate over 18 exabytes per month in 2013. Global mobile data traffic will grow at a CAGR of 131 percent between 2008 and 2013, reaching over two exabytes per month by 2013.
According to the Digital Britain Report 494 Exabytes of data was transferred across the globe on 15 June 2009.

According to an IDC paper sponsored by EMC Corporation, 161 exabytes of data were created in 2006, "3 million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written," with the number expected to hit 988 exabytes in 2010.

Several filesystems use disk formats which support theoretical volume sizes of several exabytes, including Btrfs, XFS, ZFS, exFAT and NTFS.

The ext4 file system format supports volumes up to 1 exabyte in size, although the userspace tools cannot yet administer such filesystems.

One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video.

This same principal can be applied to glass, though it would take far more precise equipment.