I wouldn't use CD's.
Good HDD's last longer but keep an eye on their Power On Hours with CrystalDiskInfo or similar diagnostic software.
Tape is still preferred in server environments, they tend to last far longer. Some say 50 years.
All this with proper handling, storage and BACKUP's.
And finally one has papyrus... 😉
Hugo
Good HDD's last longer but keep an eye on their Power On Hours with CrystalDiskInfo or similar diagnostic software.
Tape is still preferred in server environments, they tend to last far longer. Some say 50 years.
All this with proper handling, storage and BACKUP's.
And finally one has papyrus... 😉
Hugo
Protocols are an important factor. 100% of my CDs remain perfectly functional long after the IDE protocol died. Optical drives still appear to be plentiful for now. Plus perfectly functional drives that went to static storage were later found DOA, presumably due to mechanical issues.
Keep multiple copies of your data on different computers. This is easy to do with rsync on Linux.
Any media will become obsolete in a decade or two. I have some 8" floppy disks to demonstrate this point.
Ed
Any media will become obsolete in a decade or two. I have some 8" floppy disks to demonstrate this point.
Ed
If I remember well, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's Ultradisc CD-Rs have a lifetime of 300 years according to their own accelerated lifetime tests. They used to cost about 5 to 7 times as much as an average normal CD-R. Whether there are any operational CD-players or CD-ROM drives left 300 years from now is another matter, of course.
Indeed, there's also the M-Disc, IMHO to be avoided for exactly the same reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
Hugo
Cloud storage 😃. It is then someone else’s problem, they have to manage the storage format obsolescence and backups. Triple redundant storage in addition to geo redundancy is commonplace and not expensive.
I ended up with CDs, DVDs, old hard drives all over the place. In practice I use OneDrive, iCloud, and Azure storage. As a Windows/iOS user this works out ok for me.
My take is that cloud storage isn’t going away anytime soon and if you stick with the big players you should be ok.
Having 1G broadband helps here so is not an option for everyone.
I ended up with CDs, DVDs, old hard drives all over the place. In practice I use OneDrive, iCloud, and Azure storage. As a Windows/iOS user this works out ok for me.
My take is that cloud storage isn’t going away anytime soon and if you stick with the big players you should be ok.
Having 1G broadband helps here so is not an option for everyone.
Medium is one thing, file format another. Not much sense in having a data carrier that can survive 500 years if next year the file format is not supported anymore. Archiving is a science.
Doesn't the same hold for anything involving computers? Even if the storage media and playback equipment still work after a couple of decades, chances are the computers can't interface with them anymore or don't understand the obsolete file formats. If the ancient Egyptians had had computers, we would know far less about their culture.
Spinning hard disks are engineered for about 100year lifetime of magnetic data, for what its worth - storing cold will extend life of the magnetic data - however the lifetime of the mechanism could be a very different matter.
Flash storage I don't know, but it will be finite as its a compromize with storage density.
A metal pressing is probably the longest lived technology we have, and CDs are effectively that, assuming the polycarbonate doesn't degenerate.
