Digital Longevity

You guys make some good points. I was particularly thinking about the idea of the great grand kids finding an old hard drive of grandpas photos in a trunk in the attic and not having any way to see them (assuming the hard drive still worked). But I guess if you found a 50 year old negatives in the attic now it's not like you would just pop them in your computer. You'd have to take them somewhere that did that kind of work. So I guess that's no different than having to take a HDD to someone that could still work with the then obsolete technology.

The lady giving the presentation did say she loved her digital camera and checks all the time to see if the National Library of Congress will except digital yet. :)
I've found 100 year old glass negatives at my parents house. If you hold them up or put a sheet of blank paper behind they are clearly visible. There's enough visible even without this for someone not knowing photography to realize there's an image present, and a fairly good chance they'd be able to make it out eventually.
If not updated digital data will become unreadable. But if it's data that you want to keep, it's much safer as exact copies can be kept on different locations (even different continents for the ultimate bomb proofing). Transferring to new physical media types is relatively easy, and even re-coding to a different format is not much of an issue. Actively archived digital data should keep much longer than film.
That is incorrect, digital data stored in a glass matrix will remain readable for hundreds of thousands of years and survive extremes in temperature humidity and other environmental factors that will quickly destroy other methods of storage.
The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records.
M-discs do not need to be re-written to remain intact and fully operable.

Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind | University of Southampton
Torture testing the 1,000 year DVD | ZDNet
Have you got proof, I'll stick with film and wash my negative well

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[QUOTE="Watchful, post: 3614538, member: 213144
That is incorrect, digital data stored in a glass matrix will remain readable for hundreds of thousands of years and survive extremes in temperature humidity and other environmental factors that will quickly destroy other methods of storage.
The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records.
M-discs do not need to be re-written to remain intact and fully operable.

Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind | University of Southampton
Torture testing the 1,000 year DVD | ZDNet[/QUOTE]

My own experience with glass is that it's somewhat prone to shock, which may or may not be an issue, with glass matrixes. :)

It MAY be that the data will remain readable for many years but as a yet very new technology it's predicted lifespan may prove to be very different. (I have hundreds of CDs that haven't lived up to the early claims of longevity) It is also very likely that within a relatively short time an improved storage technology will be available so the readers will no longer be around in 100 years...

My main point however was that if the data is managed, it can be transposed to whatever new medium takes the place of that being used. If it's saved with checksum data any data corruption can be detected as well so corrupted data can be rebuilt from one of the identical copies stored elsewhere. Together these make digital archiving considerably better than print/film which have proved to be very vulnerable to fire...
 
Normal CDs last about 8 years as predicted.
 
I've already recovered files from 13-year-old CD's. I should pop one of my oldest ones in now to see - I think I have some from almost 17 years ago.
 
when it comes up with corrupt file or corrupted format unknown format you know your screwed
 

Well, thank goodness. Now we just need to cyrogenically freeze a few folks and problem solved.

It's in your DNA, man. Just pass it all on to your kids.


Great, now the law will have to worry about people saving NSFW photos in their DNA and passing it along to their kids who are underage. "Sorry Johnny, the image reader wont pull the files from your right arm until you are 21."
 

Well, thank goodness. Now we just need to cyrogenically freeze a few folks and problem solved.

It's in your DNA, man. Just pass it all on to your kids.


Great, now the law will have to worry about people saving NSFW photos in their DNA and passing it along to their kids who are underage. "Sorry Johnny, the image reader wont pull the files from your right arm until you are 21."
21 is the age for drinking. 18 is for x rated material.
Just as a side thought, why would the DNA in your right arm be different than anywhere else?
 

Well, thank goodness. Now we just need to cyrogenically freeze a few folks and problem solved.

It's in your DNA, man. Just pass it all on to your kids.


Great, now the law will have to worry about people saving NSFW photos in their DNA and passing it along to their kids who are underage. "Sorry Johnny, the image reader wont pull the files from your right arm until you are 21."
21 is the age for drinking. 18 is for x rated material.
Just as a side thought, why would the DNA in your right arm be different than anywhere else?


Dude, it was a joke. :) 21 was arbitrary. it's 19 for drinking here, 18 just a few miles away in Quebec, x rated material is 18 here as well (Although our PG 13 vs PG14 is different), but since this is a world wide forum, the numbers may vary from place to place. If you want to change it to 18, the point stays the same. :) As for the DNA from one part of your body, you are correct. (Wow, I'll have to remember to do strict fact checking before trying humor next time. lol )
 
OK...rotflmao
 

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