A compact cassette tape for DNA-based data storage

DNA with high storage density can serve as an alternative storage medium to respond to the global explosion of data growth and become a powerful personal storage memory if an integrated compact device can store and handle large-scale data. Here, we incorporate a DNA cassette tape with 5.5 × 10⁵ addressable data partitions (addressing rate up to 1570 partitions per second), a DNA loading capacity of 28.6 mg per kilometer, and deposit-many-recover-many (DMRM) features per partition to flexibly manage large-scale storage data and achieve hundreds of years of data preservation. We develop a compact DNA cassette tape drive and verify its functionality by randomly depositing incomplete images into the data partition, demonstrating a completely automated closed-loop operation involving addressing, recovery, removal, subsequent file deposition, and file recovery again, all accomplished within 50 min. Last, the complete image is restored by next-generation sequencing and decoding. DNA cassette tape provides a strategy for fast, compact, large-scale DNA-based cold or warm data storage.