music archive, 100 year method

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PRR

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> is nothing sacred?

is+nothing+sacred.jpg


> you can't be certain to find SATA hardware in a hundred years...

Indeed, I would be certain you could not.

But interfaces come and go. A viable long-term storage MUST include copying and diffusion. The scrolls in Alexandria were probably re-copied several times over the long history of the library. And as noted, many were copied and the copies carried away throughout the world. When Europe fell into the Dark Ages and old scrolls were fire-starters, fortuitously the Irish had developed a passion for copying old works and saved a lot for posterity.

When SATA replaces PATA, and TATA replaces SATA, and UATA replaces TATA, and sub-space etherics replace all plug interfaces, there is always a few-year window when old and new technologies co-exist. I recently retired (then re-commissioned) my PATA&SATA mobo. It was not long ago I had a SATA card for an ISA mobo. FWIW, 3.5"-flop to USB drives can still be found. By back-compatibility, I would expect to be able to cobble a 5.25" flop to the guts of one (for standard formats, not for odd head/sector tracking).

There are several LONG-running companies who take over abandoned deep mines and become Secure Physical Storage. There's one in the NJ (NY?) hills who runs a courier van into NYC every day to fetch tapes-and-whatever from NYC's mighty data centers. (I'm sure they take FedEx also.) Cool constant temperature, ample physical security both by staffing and by the nature of a deep mine. As long as civilization does not collapse, there is ample incentive to keep these operations going for Big Business, so your little heap will be secure.
Iron Mountain is perhaps the most famous ex-mine storage outfit. I note they maintain separate vault environments for film, tape, paper, and other media. But there are several others, and some may be more open to small less-valuable storage. (Your tunz do not compare to central bank records, or even identity documents like the friends of IM's founder.)
 
Due to my failed cache retreval, I have come up with better locations.

Looking at some old USGS maps I noticed a landmark that never moves, cemeteries.

I know of a setteler/pioneer graveyard deep in the back country. Found it when I noticed old wagon ruts barely recessed on the ground.
Checked it later and sure enough was on a survey.

So have the exact coordinates without a gps.

-bruce
 
powered up some old laptop drives today, they have been idle a long time, 6-8 years.

it was only an experiment. All were fine.

Im thinking for a real long term recovery, warm up the drive on 180 degree plane from the storage position. then tap gently on side of casting prior to power up.

flash is too risky i think.

-
 
Two options:
1. copy the data about every 10 years to new media; if necessary, recode to new standards too
2. put the data on paper tape - this is not a joke, as we know that paper can last for centuries if kept under reasonable conditions and it should be fairly easy for any level of technology to detect holes in paper. Include on a tape an ASCII description of the digital audio tape format. (Long after magnetic storage became easily available, UK nuclear power stations required that the source of all computer software used in them was stored in a paper tape archive so it could always be read).
 
Use sheet music, become famous and popular, the rest goes by itself. Think of Mozart.

I actually considered the bar coding method ( from Byte magazine 70s ) but from working at a newspaper I know its impossible to rely on 'paper'.
Its in a constant state of decay.

Powered up another laptop that has been in storage for at least 10 years, I had totally forgotten about it. My wife had put it in her closet.

I removed the l-ion pack and powered it up, no problems.
 
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Seems to me that carved stone has been proven to last thousands of years. Egyptian hieroglyphics etc.

Make three copies of each original (in case the stone fractures due to bad luck, earthquake, etc) and store the copies in geographically separated locations. Done.

Similarly, photographs _can_ last hundreds of years if well-made and well-cared-for. Those photos of Abraham Lincoln are 160 years old.
 
jfetter said:
I actually considered the bar coding method ( from Byte magazine 70s ) but from working at a newspaper I know its impossible to rely on 'paper'.
Its in a constant state of decay.
Good quality paper can last for centuries under the right conditions. Ordinary commercially produced books from a century ago or more are still readable with no difficulty.
 
Well I have a bunch of SATA hard-drives and the the PCB plating of the areas with no solder like the ones for the motor and head contact points are either corroded or flaking off after only a few years. Drives were from Seagate and Western Digital. Any company that use similar plating will suffer the same problem. The drives won't read reliably because the gold contacts that touches the PCB where this problem is happening are no longer reliable.
 
I recently found some punched paper tape ( from a teletype, yellow, oiled.) in my garage in Florida. They were just rolled up and exposed to the atmosphere for the last 40 years. They have not decayed, grown mold, and are not brittle. They were not wrapped up, but just kept in a cardboard box.

Now to find a reader!
 
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Ready for a proper burial.

I removed all of the mp3s and have only lossless files now. Its refined down to fit on a 500Gb drive.

The bulk specific gravity is slightly above 1.0 so it will neither sink nor swim.

I put a reminder on the iphone to dig up in five years and report back here.
 

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