What digital storage can retain information the longest? Recordable CD/DVDs only last a couple of years. A decade at most. Barring catastrophic disk failures, HDs seem to last the longest, but what about Flash Memory? These types of memories are increasing in capacity rapidly and they don't have any moving parts.
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les aptt2005-09-21 3:58
It's gonna depend on how often the media's accessed, and more to the point how long before it's obsolete. Even if the media's still intact you need a method to read it. How may out there still have access to a working 5.25 floppy drive? That flash drive may retain data for, let's say 100yrs. Will USB still be in use? Doubt it. You also need the software to read it, the OS that underlies that software yada, yada... .
This is a serious problem already for archivists and it's only gonna get worse.
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CCFreak2K!mgsA1X/tJA2005-09-21 11:13
In 100 years, who's gonna care what's on the stick? Archaeologists, maybe, but not a whole lot of others. And those who do, will probably have all the legacy systems they need.
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Anonymous2005-09-21 11:25
>>3
In 100 years archaeologists will be reading your post and writing articles about how stupid people were back then.
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les aptt2005-09-22 3:53
>>3
Well, you might. Could be family pictures for example, but that's I suppose rather trival. A Geomorpholoigist I know wants to revisit the data from his doctoral dissertation. The school still has it of course--on the old IBM .75in magnetic tape and printouts. Box upon box of faded printouts. Guess which one he's forced to use?
To repeat: This is a serious problem. How to store immense amounts of data long term AND be able to access it.
Ideas anyone?
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Anonymous2005-09-22 5:01
>>1
That's because you're buying cheap, low-quality media. Princo DVD-Rs will last for months, if any. Average media will last for some 2 years.
Taiyo Yuden media, on the contrary, may very well last for a hundred years (according to UV tests), and a new TY disc burnt with a quality burner like NEC's ND line or Plextor's will have even less parity errors than the original pressed media.
Storing digital data for periods beyond a decade is a bitch of a problem, and an area of major research among archivists. An entire chunk of our history will be lost because of this.
It is getting worse! Not only do you need a reliable media that can be effectively extracted a long time from now, there's that explosion of information to deal with too.
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Anonymous2005-09-22 13:26
>>6
I would like to know where you are pulling that information from. I'm not talking about princo, crap brands. A decade would be stretching it. Granted I still have Memorex CDRs from 4 years ago that still read. I suppose if you burned a TY DVD and kept it in a dry, dark place and never used it, it could last longer, but 100 years?!? I call bullshit.
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Anonymous2005-09-22 17:27
>>8
Several sites like CD Freaks, from several sources. I spent 7 days investigating before buying a large load of discs; absolutely everybody who seemed to know what he/she was saying agreed that Taiyo Yuden is the very best media, and I had found several references to the 100 years estimation.
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Anonymous2005-09-22 17:45
I wouldn't rely on TY discs actually lasting 100 years, but they definitely last longer than regular media.
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Anonymous2005-09-22 20:58
Not to rain on one's parade, but isn't the advantage of digital media the fact that you can copy it? Why worry about media that lasts eternally when you can just make a bunch of copies, and them make more down the road?
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Anonymous2005-09-22 21:26
>>11
Probably because we have better things to do than copy.
That, and it requires vigilance. You're barking mad if you think that's going to happen for 99.9% of the data out there.
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Anonymous2005-09-22 23:50
>>11
Are you made of money? Do you enjoy moving all your expiring CDR data on to a HD so you can burn it off to DVDR or whatever new media? BTW do you know if it's expired?