12mo ago

Digital data has the potential to remain completely stable for thousands of generations with constant copying to new hardware

In reality it is more complex but the possibility is there

12 comments

Yes and no. It's not incorrect, but the issue is said hardware degrading and constantly needing to move the data to a new medium. Always has been, pretty much.
In theory yes, in practice no. The concept of bit rot is known to anyone with a lot of data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
- Hence why they said with constant copying to new hardware.
  Though historically you could say the same with old written text, they could also be copied but humans are lazy and not very good at future proofing. One day the Vatican library will go up in smoke and we'll have once again lost some of our history.
  
  One day the Vatican library will go up in smoke and we'll have once again lost some of our history.
  Plenty of which no one is allowed access to anyway, IIRC.
- That's why you would need corruption detection with multiple copies in raid.
  So pretty much ZFS
https://youtu.be/jmaUIyvy8E8
Reality is complex
- 🤓here it is without share id
  https://youtu.be/jmaUIyvy8E8
There's always 5D Optical Data Storage, which might store data in glass for a long, long time. (It's not really 5D; it's composed of discrete nanostructures which have five attributes.) You would only have to write to a new disc every N billions of years.
- That's actually pretty crazy
Doesn't tape last a super, super long time? I thought that was of the reason for the resurgence of tape for archive storage.
- It depends on the conditions. At the end of they DAT it will fail at some point.
  
  Well, you can always get archival M-DISC. https://www.mdisc.com/ Treated special materials to resist moisture and UV degradation. Should last 1000 years if not tampered with and stored properly. Idk what the read/write speeds are, but they offer a 100GB bluray disc option. You will be long, LONG gone before the storage is no longer intact. Obviously not "forever", but pretty close to it practically speaking on human lifetime scale.
  I mean, you could engrave onto stone and expect that to last pretty much forever if stored correctly. The read/write speed and storage capacity leave a lot to be desired though.

12 comments