Based on a proven, century-old archival technique, we have successfully demonstrated the feasibility of storing high density, multi-state data in the form of interference gratings embedded in archival silver halide media. Data stored as interference gratings cannot be erased remotely, or altered after writing and processing, yielding a verifiable backup storage tier for archives and data security applications. WORF is engineered to be a permanent and low energy data storage medium not requiring periodic refreshing or authentication. Should the original reading devices be lost in the far future, human visible instructions for creating a reading device and decoding the formats—a digital “Rosetta Stone”—are included on the data media. The unalterable WORF medium has ancillary uses for other critical data storage applications such as securing an operating system against hacking, and verifying data transactions.