Microsoft is planning to ditch tape drives and use biology to store data on strands of DNA within the next few years, the company's computer architects revealed.

Microsoft is expecting to have an operational storage system using DNA within a data center by the end of 2020, a report in MIT Technology Review noted. The goal is a "proto-commercial system in three years storing some amount of data on DNA in one of our data centers, for at least a boutique application," Doug Carmean, a partner architect at Microsoft Research, said.

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An operational DNA storage is the next step to ensure the longevity of data for a data-driven generation, as conventional drivers could only store data for a few decades, Ubergizmo noted. With the increasing bulk of data generated each day, Microsoft has been considering of using biological material such as DNA to back countless terabytes of digital information.

Carmean said the device is the size of a large 1970s Xerox copier. "We hope to get it branded as 'Your Storage with DNA'," he said.

Researchers have previously been able to cram information into living cells, storing 215 million GB of data on a single gram of DNA. But they face a challenge in recording data in the form of a nucleic acid sequence.

Microsoft has announced last July that it had successfully stored 200 megabytes of data in the form of 100 literary classics in DNA's four bases in a single process. However, the company faced several challenges including the speed of data transfer and the cost of the project.

In a published report, Microsoft revealed that the entire process has cost around $800,000 on the open market, and it needs to be several thousand times cheaper to compete. Moreover, the speed of data stored on DNA strands was as slow as 400 bytes per second, far behind Microsoft's 100 megabytes per second target.