Poul-Henning Kamp  

@jonathan @cstross

Public Service info from the volunteer chief archivist at datamuseum.dk:

NEVER use flash-based storage for archival purposes.

Not CF, not SD, not USB-sticks, not SSD, not NVME, nor any other flash-technology based storage media.

Flash is simply not a stable storage mechanism: Just like Dynamic RAM it will eventually forget your bits.

Unfortunately there are no good choices for long term data storage, but flash is a particular bad choice.

1+
Zoe  

@bsdphk @jonathan @cstross what about tape?

1+
Travis Mooney-Evans  

@ekg @bsdphk @jonathan @cstross tape degrades horribly. And the read and write process are pretty physically aggressive.

1
Zoe
Follow

@ttmevans @bsdphk @jonathan @cstross long term storage doesn't necessarily imply read and write cycles, quiet the opposite.

· Librem Social · 2 · 1 · 1
Travis Mooney-Evans  

@ekg @bsdphk @jonathan @cstross Sure, but over time the media of tape degrades and the extra contact the read heads can put extra stress on an already weak media.

I do remember some WORM media designed for archival back in the 90s, but I don't know how stable it was over other optical media.

0
Poul-Henning Kamp  

@ekg @ttmevans @jonathan @cstross

Actually it does:

The only way to preserve data long term, is to have many copies and periodically check that they can be read, and to keep copying to fresh media periodically.

1+
Daniël Franke :panheart:  

@bsdphk @ekg @ttmevans @jonathan @cstross Yep, that's the only reliable way. It also gives you a chance to see if the format is still easily readable.

0
Poul-Henning Kamp  

@ekg @ttmevans @jonathan @cstross

The only reasonably reliable data storage we know of, is paper tape.

0
Sign in to participate in the conversation
Librem Social

Librem Social is an opt-in public network. Messages are shared under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license terms. Policy.

Stay safe. Please abide by our code of conduct.

(Source code)

image/svg+xml Librem Chat image/svg+xml