Archiving Digital Data an Unsolved Problem

mattnyc99 writes, "It's a huge challenge: how to store digital files so future generations can access them, from engineering plans to family photos. The documents of our time are being recorded as bits and bytes with no guarantee of readability down the line. And as technologies change, we may find our files frozen in forgotten formats. Popular Mechanics asks: Will an entire era of human history be lost?" From the article: "[US national archivist] Thibodeau hopes to develop a system that preserves any type of document — created on any application and any computing platform, and delivered on any digital media — for as long as the United States remains a republic. Complicating matters further, the archive needs to be searchable. When Thibodeau told the head of a government research lab about his mission, the man replied, 'Your problem is so big, it's probably stupid to try and solve it.'"

Comments

Republic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thibodeau hopes to develop a system that preserves any type of document... for as long as the United States remains a republic

So he only needs to archive up to November 7th, 2000? That should help him with managing the scope.

Ironically, just an hour ago...

[A_Non_Moose]

I had the displeasure of trying to pull up some mp3's I'd ripped a few years ago (2000/2001)
that was likely done on a cendyne cd burner at a max of 4X on imation media.

Put it in a DVD-/+RW DL and...and...zip, zilch, nada...unreadable.

Oh, FSCK!

Fired up son's computer with a (boo!) Sony dvd-rom...and, there it is (yea!).

So, IMO/E 100+ years is nothing, how about 10?

Hardware, software, os, format, media as variables to b0rken along the way?

And to the game dev: Amen! fat32 (maybe ntfs) borked tomb raider and a few other games
for a while, 2k was rough at first, Heretic2 has a 25% chance of working under XP and very
few have figred out why (but works flawlessly under 2k).

Upgrade-itis drives even the most stoic of IT lemmings over the cliff with data one step
behind.

Microsoft's OS is partly to blame, but Linux ain't so innocent, either (think breaking wordperfect 8, which I am still sad about).

New, improved, faster and shiny and with blinkin' lights (ooooh)...but will it last?

Crap shoot, russian roulette, IMO, and the current stand on virtulazation by MS says about how
much of a flying fsck at a rolling doughnut they care.