Hoarders everywhere will be heartened to hear that Microsoft is developing a database that will give them an electronic outlet to their obsession, storing their whole life on a hard disk.

According to New Scientist magazine it believes the database - dubbed "MyLifeBits" - could hold a huge amounts of information, catalogued and easy to search.

Many people already record important moments in their lives - but shoeboxes full of photos, piles of documents and scattered video tapes take much longer to search than the repository the researchers are working on.

Gordon Bell, one of the scientists driving the project, is already putting as much material as he can in a directory of his life.

He stores every email he sends and receives, along with everything he reads or buys online. He is also recording all his phone conversations and any meetings he attends.

The researchers are working on smart tags to allow items to be found, and on ways to record the relationship between items in the database.