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CDs, DVDs Eyed For Long-Term Archival Use
Alien54 writes "Computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are launching an effort to develop specifications for 'archival quality' CD and DVD media that agencies could use to ensure the procurement of sufficiently robust media for their long-term archiving needs (i.e., 50 years and longer). See the press release at the NIST site." The research involves "...enclosed chambers that use temperature and humidity changes to artificially age the media some 20 years in only six weeks."
Are they still working?
Honestly,
I've got CDs that I burned just 2 years ago, and my CD drive has trouble reading them - no scratches, it just appears that they age waaaay to quick. I know a lot of people who keep photos on CD, I hope they realise that it's not so permanent.
Maybe something good would come of this. I'd actually be willing to pay out $5 to $10 to get a CD that once burned would stick around for a while.
tom-george.comBecause geeks rate higher t
The only sure way to archive data is to keep it on a network-attached device - and migrate it regularly with changes in technology. No removable media is foolproof as hardware can break down at a time when it can't be repaired or replaced. Ask anyone with a Betamax video collection or, more relevantly, the BBC, who had great trouble reading their not-very-old Domesday archive on laserdisc. BTW, that's not a really small computer in the photo, it's a really big CD!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
We just had a baby girl (yes, even geeks need to reproduce). So people ask "what can we bring the little gorgeous thing?" (they don't have to sit through nights of "woaAAAHHH!") I've figured that the best thing would be presents that she can open when she's old enough to appreciate them, like on her 18th birthday.
DVD players may still be around in 2021, after all I can still read 3.5" floppies. But DVD media has a shelf life of 5-7 years AFAICT, several older DVDs I've tried recently don't work anymore. CDs may be less delicate, resist better.
But if you wanted to give someone a digital present (say a bunch of their baby photos) for 18 years hence, how would you go about it?
This was going to be an Ask Slashdot, but (a) I'm too tired, and (b) the whole "what can I give a gurgling baby" thing is not really stuff that interests geeks.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Discs in fact are way better method of storage than traditional tape storage due to ease of accessiblity. However, in order replace tape for long term archiving, more has to be done than making durable discs.
:). I do not know exactly how but they must have something to charge us enoromous amount of money for recovery. :)
The other major fact is Recoverability. It's not unusual to find defective tapes before their end-of-life and we must send them to experts for retrieval of important data in them. They've technologies to recover the data, like baking the tape(yeah, bake them in oven, but please don't do it with your kitchen oven
I'm not sure if existing technology could effectively recover data from aged, defective discs. That's something we must consider before they could replace traditional tape storage for long term archiving.
It shows that digital still has a long way to go compared to the current UK practice of printing on vellum... in other words goats skin !!!
Quote: "... we compare longevity of 250 or 500 years [of long-life paper] with the 1,500 years of vellum"
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
It looks like it will become necessary to copy everything to new media every year or so...
A common mistake is that archives (digital or otherwise) require no maintenance. In the case of digital archives you should be checking them, on an annual basis, not just for physical degradation.
A more common problem is that the applications used to create the data and/or their documentation do not exist any more, rendering the data as useless as if the physical media had been destroyed.
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This sig is inoffensive.
And acid free paper doesn't turn to ash.
The RIAA must be ROTFLTAO at the thought that the plastic they sell is a perishable good. Only slightly (take the long view, some books are hundreds of years old,) more perishable that the original source which only lasts as long as an echo.
I have vinyl from the '60s and '70s that I played on a good turntable then and (since I still have that turn table,) I can still listen to now.
Since the early 20th century, our industrial processes have been destroying our heritage.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
In the big picture, who cares that a book lasts for centuries. I care that the information lasts for ever.
Keep the data on live networked file systems and have a maintenance process.
- When drives go bad replace them
- Keep short term backups incase of catastrophic or human failures
- keep hardware up to date
The data from my file systems circa 1991 are still alive, because I continue to keep multiple copies on networks so it is easy to "rsync".
(The 20 MB drive I was using in 1991 is dead by the way, so is the machine, its predicessor, and its predicessor. The next two are still alive, but not my primary machine. See, I have migrated my data with the technology.)
Joe
Joe Batt Solid Design
Wow! I wonder if I can get one of these for my wine cellar.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When I read the previous slashdot post about CDRs rapidly decaying (even becoming unreadable in a few years) I had trouble believing this... but I ran my own tests using the "Nero CD Speed" tool's ScanDisc option.
What I found was that my 3 to 4 year old archival CDs had anywhere between 20% to 50% of their surface damaged; they had (recoverable) errors. This spanned multiple brands, including Memorex, Acer, and HP.
Remember that data correction algorithms can recover from minor errors, but if data is becoming damaged this quickly it will be not too long before data is actually lost on CDRs.
Is there any reason you couldn't design a "book" that would actaully be a machine-readable optically scanned card deck. You'd get the advantages of a durable paper stock, and the decks could be bound in such a way that they could be mechnically unbound, read, and returned in the way similar to a tape library.
I'm not sure what kind of data density you could get, though, although I suspect it would be slightly more than you might think. It creates a storage problem, but then it has great durability, and the machine to read it would arguably be easier to re-make in the future than the ones used to read traditional optical media, since you could include a card in each deck explaining in human terms how the deck is encoded.