[DM-MUG] long-term data storage

[Darcy Baston]

I keep hearing horror stories about CDR/DVDR type media losing its data within months to years, and have lost some data myself from disks that seemed to have its data evaporate. Well, when I say evaporate I mean within months, files that could open one month were unreadable in the next etc.

Someone told me that the organic nature of DVD/CD R media interracts very easily with the air and the foam in the soft sleeve multipak media holders. You know the kind that look like binders with pages of pockets? I'm not sure if this is true, but the all this information and experience has led me to believe that if I really want to archive something for 5-10 years, optical is not the way go.

I've considered using hard drives, but those devices are on shorter borrowed time. I've had a good track record, getting a hard drive to last at least 5 years, but I need to go past that with some confidence.

So, my next bit of research is going to be on other solutions including tape. While looking up stuff, I discovered Iomega had a cartridge solution called the Iomega Rev. I know it's an independent motor hard drive cartridge solution, but they claim their 35GB media will hold information for 30 years. I'm assuming that's in a vacuum, but surely in a dry cool environment I can get 10 years out of it?

Are there any other solutions I should/could be looking at? Does anyone have any personal experience with the goal of long-term data storage?

Thanks!
Darcy