'Digital Dark Age' May Doom Some Data - if you don't prepare
I think this article is pretty interesting ( direct link: click ) I personally think that this isn't just a standards issue, and a proprietary vs. open issue, but it is also an issue of proper practices and quality storage media. Recently I read a blog post of one of my blogging colleagues in Greece that irretrievably lost his valuable data (from ten years ago) that was residing on CD-Rs. Luckily my insistence of expensive storage media and slow recording speeds has spared (most) of my data, including those silly little reports I did in High School, but how long will optical media last? Archival quality media can last for half a century, or more, but is copying over and over a viable solution? After all bit and bytes will eventually be corrupted from the continuous migration. FULL ARTICLE: ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2008) — What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive? The framed photo...