Long term archiving??

[Hecate]

I've thought along similar lines. Beehthoven's Fur Elise has lasted
centuries, through various media. It's a pattern, that transcends what
it's recorded on.

Apart from the massive diffence in scale, a 50 meg tiff (for example)
is just a pattern. We need a new, ultra compact, inherantly stable
media to record it on.

Funny you should say that - I've just been reading an article about
HDS (Holographic Data Storage).. Likely to be out for Enterprise level
companies in the next couple of years. A 1" unit will store approx
100Gb. Within 5 years they expect that to be 1Tb. And so forth...

 

[Cruising Chrissy]

Each has it's own limitations. However at the current state-of-the-art
it's likely the photos will have lifetimes longer than the individual
digital media unless refreshed within the proper limits for the media
AND converted to modern media as it comes on the scene.

Not according to 3M and Kodak both who are reporting severe problems
with image and media degradation including microfilm.

Unless things have changed very recently, corporate America uses
optical storage for their archiving and those archives are *refreshed*
on a scheduled basis. Hence if need be the media can be changed as
technology changes.

Many of my data and image files have followed suit. However when I'm
gone will any one have any interest in preserving that data. If not
and several generations later some one develops an interest in the
"old days" and their ancestors the question becomes, will they be able
to read what ever media the data is on at that time.

One of the pieces that we seem to be forgetting is that as
technologies increase in a nearly exponential manner, why would we
think we would be unable to read ALL technologies? Rebuilding simple
CD or DVD or other readers........what's the problem there? Will we
even need to rebuild them? OTB thinking means exactly that, OTB.

With most digital media it is a question of whether future generations
will be able to read it, not whether the data will still be good. Most
likely the data will be good even if they can not read it.

See above.

Magnetic media is not considered archival because of the relative
short life of the data, not the media. The data can be refreshed and
used archivally, but it requires far more attention than optical as
far as the industry is concerned.
Correct.

Backups used to be on the big tape drives, but that data had a
relatively short life. It tended to bleed through in the magnetic
sense. I don't think you will find many tapes much over 10 years old
that have none of the files corrupted. More likely most tapes will
have at least some that are corrupt.
Yes.

Hard drives do not suffer from that problem but the last I heard the
lifetime for data was considered no more than 10 years.

HD data longevity has everything to do with the storage
quality/environment.

Some one must have the URL for a site containing this information.
http://www.cd-info.com/CDIC/Technology/CD-R/Media/Longevity.html
is a good start, but the data is ...a bit dated. In particular, check
out the link to the Kodak media. However I'd like to reference a
remark made earlier in this thread alluding to the CDs being unable to
withstand much heat. The accelerated lifetime tests were run at
"100_degrees_C_" because there was so little degradation at 60 degrees
C. This was over 6 years ago! materials have improved since then.
Significantly.

Please note the projected data lifetime was OVER 100 YEARS!
TDK lists theirs as 70 years. Will there be any equipment around in
70 years to read either disk?

Will there need to be?

OTB.

 

[Cruising Chrissy]

Funny you should say that - I've just been reading an article about
HDS (Holographic Data Storage).. Likely to be out for Enterprise level
companies in the next couple of years. A 1" unit will store approx
100Gb. Within 5 years they expect that to be 1Tb. And so forth...

3 D, color spectrum virtual barcoding. Nearly infinite storage
capacity.