[Cialug] long term storage

[Zachary Kotlarek]

On Jul 15, 2009, at 7:35 AM, Colin Burnett wrote:

> There is no such thing as archiving of digital data, which is rather  
> worrisome.


I agree, insofar as you have to continue to care about your data to  
ensure it lives on. To a large degree that's not unique to digital  
data; while books have a longer shelf life they're just as likely to  
be lost/trashed/allowed to decay/etc. unless they're considered  
important by their keeper -- consider the lost Apollo tapes, which are  
still readable, were professionally archived, and which are relatively  
valuable to many people, but were lost nonetheless.

I think short-term archives -- on the order of single-digit years --  
are part of a good backup strategy. And in that context any modern  
media is likely to be appropriate. But if there's any data you care  
about you will likely need to express that care on a continuing basis  
in order to keep your data around.

Luckily with digital archives "continue to care" is as simple as "make  
a copy every couple of years".

While others might disagree, I'm convinced the right solution of long- 
term archiving is either:
	A) Keep the material as part of your active data set, so it's in your  
normal storage and hits your normal backups. You might need to take  
some care that it doesn't accidentally get deleted (see short-term  
archives above), but if it's part of your active data set there's no  
reason to worry about archival in the first place, as the data will  
automatically be transfered around as you upgrade your primary storage  
through the years.
	B) Acquiesce to updating your archive on a regular basis -- once  
couple of years or so. While there's no great long-term solution for  
digital storage, given the possible decay of media, change of  
interfaces/formats/etc., it is exceedingly easy to simply make a  
second copy once in a while. Then if 5 years from now USB ports or  
optical drives are disappearing, or your original media is revealed to  
have only a 4-year life span, or JPEG is out-of-fashion it will be no  
big deal. The other part round-about benefit to archive maintenance is  
that, as storage devices continue to grow, your annual archive refresh  
might well lead you back to option A, where archival isn't necessary  
in the first place because your "archive" data size is small compared  
to your primary storage capacity.

	Zach

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