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FTA: While it took years for the original Human Genome Project to analyze a single human genome (some 3 billion DNA base pairs), modern lab equipment with microfluidic chips can do it in hours.

OK, so assuming 1 hour for 3 billion bases, it's 1000 hours for 3 trillions bases (3 Terabits) or 1 million hours for ~3 petabits (or 400TBs of data). Yeah, that's a long time, roughly 100 years :)

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It should be highly parallelizable though, so all hope is not lost.

I believe that also consumes the strands you're reading, so unless the source is copied many times, it is probably even slower than that.

Good thing cells have been copying DNA since life began.

Great, now my hard drive is going to get cancer!

At least you can remove/destroy the cells though. Aside from DNA storage & replication, there's no auxiliary purpose of the tissue.

http://xkcd.com/1217/

I'm not a biologist, wouldn't those cells would prefer to copy their own DNA?

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