cd longevity

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Fri May 7 12:16:42 2004

> I'm thinking the best long term storage solution is... paper
> printouts. How retro :)

A while ago - I can't remember whether it was on this list or not - I
saw the question "I have some data I want to be able to retrieve in 50
years, what's the best way to store it?".

Aside from "copy it to new media every four or five years or so", the
only thing I ever saw proposed that sounded convincing was something
machine-readable (barcodes?) on acid-free paper, kept in an inert
atmosphere. (Actually, for as little as 50 years, I'm not sure the
inert atmosphere is really necessary.) A megabit per page is not all
that implausible; at 8x10? inches printable area per page, that's only
a little over 100dpi each way. (sqrt(1048576/(8*10.5))?=?111.72756-.)
Hardly suitable for routine backups of multi-gigabyte data sets, but
plenty good enough for archival of many things.

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Received on Fri May 07 2004 - 12:16:42 BST

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