[PLUG] long-term data storage

David Mandel dmandel at pdxLinux.org
Thu Feb 27 10:37:01 UTC 2003


Carla,

    This is a topic that I could go on about for quite some time, but ...
I recommend clay or stone tablets.  We have and can read clay and stone
tablets that are thousands of years old.  Of course, you may prefer paper.
Paper is easier to use and works pretty well depending on how the paper
was created and how careful you are storing it.  The dead sea scrolls
from around the time of Christ are in pretty bad shape, but we can read
many of them.  In more practical terms, my family has books, letters,
and photographs dating back to 1870 or so.  In most cases, the paper has
lasted quite well but the book bindings have fallen apart and the images
on the letters and photographs have faded.  Moreover, the letters are a
bit difficult to read, because of the languages and hand writing styles
used.  The photographs have lost value due to lack of meta data.
In other words, no one is still alive who knows who was photographed.

    Modern digital media is very bad in terms of long term storage.
As libraries, historical societies, and other institutions become
more and more digital, we are storing more and more of our culture
on transient media that requires constant maintenance by highly skilled
people.  If something happens in our society (war, economic depression,
total social chaos, etc) and we have to mothball everything for a
generation or two, we risk losing a lot of information of cultural
importance.

    In practical terms, we have to use digital media for many many things
and I wouldn't trust any digital storage system for more than about five
years.  Media breaks down.  Formats change.  Software to read
the data change.  Interfaces change so old tape drives or card readers
or whatever become unusable.  I have seen a lot of data lost due to
factors of this sort.  One really has to maintain data constantly
(at least once every five years) or it goes away.

I'm currently looking at some old nine track tapes.  One of them is dated
June 19, 1979.  The tapes have not been stored in good facilities; but
surprisingly I have been able to read most of them without error.  On
the other hand, this doesn't do much good since many of them are in a
variety of proprietary CDC or Prime or DG formats.  However, it has
been fun.

                                                       Dave Mandel
On Wed, 26 Feb 2003, Carla Schroder wrote:

> Is there any medium besides paper that you trust for long-term data storage?
> Seems like looking beyond five years gets iffy. What about 10-30 years? Which
> still isn't that long, compared to books and magazines.
>
> Seems to me any magnetic media, such as tape and hard drives, are inherently
> risky. Optical disks might last longer, assuming the means to read them
> survives. I've heard more than one passionate rant about "CDROMs will
> spontaneously delaminate, mark my words, and then you'll be sorry!" I have
> five-year old CDROMs that still work, my precious Quake and DOOM cds.
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Carla Schroder
> www.tuxcomputing.com
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>
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                                          Sincerely,
                                          David Mandel
                                          Chief Activist
                                          Portland Linux/Unix Group
                                          1440 NE 59th
                                          Portland, Oregon 97213
                                          (360) 260-2066 at work
                                          (541) 730-5285 cell

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