Disasters and Recovery

From: Doug <doug_at_blinkenlights.com>
Date: Sun Jan 17 16:22:50 1999

On 17 Jan 1999, Eric Smith wrote:

> I wouldn't expect a hard drive to be workable after 100 years of storage,
> even in an inert gas atmosphere.

Why not? Which parts would degrade? I think most modern systems have
flash EPROMS, including some disk drive firmware, and that's probably
going to have problems as you mentioned. Even normal ROMs have problems
with fusing gates, right? I would think a hard disk and heads should be
OK if left undisturbed with no oxidizing agents and no strong magentic
fields.

Put representative types of common media in the capsule, and let the
people from the year 2100 figure out which survive best. Now, which OS
should the machine run, Linux or Windows?

-- Doug
Received on Sun Jan 17 1999 - 16:22:50 GMT