This storage would also work differently than a magnetic hard drive, because diamonds, as they say, are forever. Every time you access or rewrite your hard drive, the material it’s made of degrades, and after five or 10 years, it’s dead. But the defects in the diamonds don’t change, and if you do nothing, your data could last as long as your diamond.

“There is a no way you can change it. It will sit there forever,” said Siddharth Dhomkar, the lead author on the study.

Veterans in the data storage industry, like Jon Toigo, are skeptical. He worries that the only people fluent in this data exchange might be men in lab coats, that there will be flaws in the data, and that cost will be high, even with imperfect diamonds. “It’s usually a 10-year interval before the tech is released for commercial use,” he said.

The researchers say their industrial fabricated diamond, which cost about $150, was the cheapest thing in their experiment. Their concept works on any material with the same flaw and any flawed diamond — not just lab ones. “The bigger the diamond, the more defects, the more places to put information,” said Mr. Henshaw.

Whether or not your diamond engagement ring could one day also hold your wedding photos is something lab members have joked about. A ring on your finger has the same defects as a ring in the lab. But light exposure will scramble the diamond’s data: “You can put something on top of the diamond, but if you were to walk around in sunlight, you would erase your wedding photos, most likely,” he said.