I would definitely go for babylonian clay...
On Dec 12, 2012, at 10:31 PM, Adrian Goldman wrote:
> I say write them out onto acid-free paper: should be good for at least 300 years without active management, if there is no fire. If that doesn't work, I believe babylonian clay tablets have an even longer expected life time….
>
> Dale, I must say I am impressed… I gave up after the exabyte to DAT transition, and decided that if I really wanted to get data sets from (my) old projects, it would be easier to regrow the crystals…
>
> Adrian
>
>
> On 13 Dec 2012, at 00:22, Dale Tronrud wrote:
>
>> I don't believe there is a solution that does not involve active
>> management. You can't write your data and pick up those media 25
>> years later and expect to get your data back -- not without some
>> heroic effort involving the construction of your own hardware.
>>
>> I have data from Brian Matthews' lab going back to the mid-1970's
>> and those data started life on 7-track mag tapes. I've moved them
>> from there to 9-track 1600 bpi tapes, to 9-track 6250 bpi tapes, to
>> just about every density of Exabyte tape, to DVD, and most recently
>> to external magnetic hard drives (each with USB, Firewire, and eSATA
>> interfaces). The hard drives are about five years old and so far
>> are holding up. Last time I checked I could still read the 10 year
>> old DVD's. I'm having real trouble reading Exabyte tapes.
>>
>> Write your data to some medium that you expect to last for at least
>> five years but anticipate that you will then have to move them to
>> something else.
>>
>> Instead of spending time working on the 100 year solution you should
>> spend your time annotating your data so that someone other than you
>> can figure out what it is. Lack of annotation and editing is the
>> biggest problem with old data.
>>
>> Dale Tronrud
>>
>> P.S. If someone needs the intensities for heavy atom derivatives of
>> Thermolysin written in VENUS format, I'm your man.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 12/12/2012 1:57 PM, Richard Gillilan wrote:
>>> Better option? Certainly not TAPE or electromechanical disk drive. CD's and DVD's don't last nearly that long and James Holton has pointed out.
>>>
>>> I suppose there might be a "cloud" solution where you rely upon data just floating around out there in cyberspace with a life of its own.
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>> On Dec 12, 2012, at 4:41 PM, Dale Tronrud wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Good luck on your search in 100 years for a computer with a
>>>> USB port. You will also need software that can read a FAT32
>>>> file system.
>>>>
>>>> Dale "Glad I didn't buy a lot of disk drives with Firewire" Tronrud
>>>>
>>>> On 12/12/2012 1:02 PM, Richard Gillilan wrote:
>>>>> SanDisk advertises a "Memory Vault" disk for archival storage of photos that they claim will last 100 years.
>>>>>
>>>>> (note: they do have a scheme for estimating lifetime of the memory, Arrhenius Equation ... interesting. Check it out: www.sandisk.com/products/usb/memory-vault/ and click the Chronolock tab.).
>>>>>
>>>>> Has anyone here looked into this or seen similar products?
>>>>>
>>>>> Richard Gillilan
>>>>> MacCHESS
>>>>>
>
Dr Laura Spagnolo
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