How Long Do You Want Digital Media To Last? 398
spamfiltertest writes "CNET asks 'Would you like your digital-storage media to last 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, 35 years or 40 years?' If you're an organization or government agency, the U.S. government and an optical-disc industry group would like you to answer that question in a quick survey. I would think that we would like our data to last forever, but maybe it's just me."
Not always forever (Score:2, Interesting)
My company recently started deleting our email after 90 days. One of the reasons I heard was to protect us in lawsuits.
Do I not understand the question correctly? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why depend on physical media (Score:4, Interesting)
--
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Wired article as proof [wired.com]
I Want A Known Quantity (Score:5, Interesting)
The length of time isn't terribly important, as long as it doesn't make the cost of new media too high (e.g. DVDs aren't too expensive, so if I have to reburn them every five years or move to the next media format at that point, that is a good use of money and time).
100+ years (Score:5, Interesting)
Longer than the copyright protection (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on which media! But no archiving (Score:4, Interesting)
I will not "archive" materials. If it's important, it stays online, migrated & backed-up. If it's no longer important -- delete. Online (HD) isn't that expensive. Archives can get lost or corrupted. Or readers may no longer be available.
Re:Make it.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the whole reason for the survey is that it's not cost-feasible to make long-lasting media, and that the efforts to drive prices ever-lower will also product media of lower quality. If you want long lasting media, you're going to have to pay for it. Personally, I'd be OK if they made two (or more) different grades. I don't need most of my computer files to last longer than 7 years, but I'd want my photos and videos to at least survive me. Hopefully, technology will one day allow me to achieve that goal without intentionally stepping off the curb in front of a moving vehicle.
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tiered costs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore, optical storage producers would be smart to offer several "levels" of guaranteed life, and you could purchase based on how long you think you need you need your data to live. e.g. price per unit... 5 years: 1 dollar, 10 years: $1.50, 20 years: $2.00 etc.
Tape lasts 100 years (Score:2, Interesting)
Floppies last 4-5 years
The problem isn't storage, it's READING the data stored in an old format. We have many miles of census data stored on punch cards and paper tapes, but don't have the machines to read them anymore - at least not in quantity.
So making it last isn't important - I can still play my records, but it's hard to find needles to play them.
A short History of written media (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not always forever (Score:3, Interesting)
Which is often the reason. I imagine the government cares because there is a statute of limitations on how long information can remain classified. So if the physical media the records are kept on expires before the statute of limitations comes into affect, there is no records for them to release.
But lawsuits are a huge reason, as you said, when computer records are involved. You keep everything that could incriminate you on age sensitive media and backup everything you can use to defend yourself or sue others for on different media before it "expires".
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, I treat digital media like traditional media - particularly books.
While the digital media maybe flimsy, there is no reasonable reason why the information therein should _not_ survive for more than 40 years.
At the very least, one can be sure that it would have historical significance. And I'm fairly certain that I would be alive 40+ years from now, which would merit the necessity for me having the media, or atleast the information therein. While the information may eventually become irrelevant, it would at the very least have posterity value.
Digital information is no different from a library of books - it's just stored digitally. I do expect my books to last as long as possible (hell, books have lasted centuries, if not more). Then why should it be any different for other media?
The real limitation here (Score:3, Interesting)
When is the last time you saw a 5.25" disk drive? How easy is it to find a Jaz drive these days? WORM reader? Something that will read your old files stored on analog cassette tape? I could go on naming defunct storage media solutions for half the day.
The only real solution for long-term storage is to keep the files "live" on a system someplace. Under and other arrangement even if the *media* the bits are stored on doesn't go bad, there's a pretty good chance that the hardware to read that media will go the way of the dodo when you're not looking.
So, once again, good planning and systems administration proves to be the answer. Set up a reliable system in a RAID mirroring setup and cut backups on a regular basis.
This became a major concern to me once I switched over to all digital photography. I have a Linux fileserver running a RAID-1 setup that serves up all my important files. Once a month, I cut three sets of backups to DVD -- one gets stuck a CD tower in my apartment, one gets taken to work and the other one goes to a storage area I have (I figure if anything ever happens to take out all three at once, losing my data will be the least of my worries). I'm up to four DVD's to back up all my data now, thanks mostly to digital photos.
It's important to be able to rely on your media over a fairly reasonable term, but in any long-term situation live filesystems are the only way to fly.
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
This works fine if you are dealing with a fairly limited amount of data but what happens if you are a library, the Census Bureau, or some other agency that may have longer storage requirements. Hopefully the organizations that require massive amounts of data to be stored essentially "forever" have considered the task of migrating from the "current" media to "future" media. I'd hate to be the organization that finds the current system doesn't have a reasonable "export to new system" option availble.
For home info, I'd like all my purchased video/audio media to last my lifetime. I don't know that all media (do I really need a CD, with patches I downloaded, to last more than a couple weeks or even months?) would need to last a persons lifetime, but having media labelled appropriately would help a user know the expected lifetime of the media and they'd purchase it based on expected needs.
I have 1.2MB floppies a good as day one and.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I second that. Even on a more basic note...even if you had the ability to read the content (word 95, msaccess...etc.)..what if you don't have a DVD player to read from? Sound hard to believe? Not really.
One example I recently read about...during the compilation of the Led Zeppelin DVD and CD sets..they were going through the archives, and found much of the sound of the concerts they were trying to save and reformat, was on old 2" analog tape of some kind. As I understand the story, they had methods of baking the tapes to get them unstuck and playable for transfer, but, they ran into the problem of trying to find a tape player for the media!! They had to look worldwide and had a very difficult time finding one that was functional and high enough in fidelity.
And c'mon...this for concerts recorded only 30+ years ago in the 70's.
Stuff recorded on todays DVD standard...well, could possibly be hard in 40 years to find a player backwards compatible enough to read today's media....
As someone with a MA in History (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I can use a flash light to read to the holes...
And realy I do have the 30 year old paper tape!
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure how much longer my turntable will hold out.
I heard that NASA was having a similar problem a few years back, GIGABYTES of date from space-probes was being lost because it was stored on tape (magnetic?) for which there were only a few readers available, so the media was degrading at a higher rate than they could recover it, given the volume of data, and throughput of their readers.
Considering the COST to obtain this data in the first place - I find it deeply disturbing that their IT people didn't have a schedule for media rotation, and upgrade to new formats over time.
10.000 years (Score:3, Interesting)
What about Decentralized Replication? (Score:2, Interesting)
The answer to every question is Decentralized P2P. Or at least I think it is.
Re:I'll take the survey in a bit, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, the technology is likely to be supported, but what what will happen to the disks that you already have? Will they still be readable 5 years from now? 10 years? 20?
Let me tell you: they won't. And copying the data to new media (say, every year) sometimes it not an option.
I stopped using CD-Rs for storing my important data when some 2-3 year old not-so-cheap disks started became unreadable. Now I use CDs for the data that I wouldn't mind much if I lose (MP3s, videos), and magneto-optical disks for the important stuff that I want to keep for years.