Submission + - How to avoid digital obsolescence of archival stor
rcbutcher writes: I'm looking at options for longterm digital data storage for small organizations and individuals. They don't have the interest or capability to regularly (e.g. every few years) migrate the data to new storage media and new technology. So they risk digital obsolescence 10, 20 or 50 years down the line : either the media decays and is unreadable, there is no longer software to read the media if it does survive, or there are no or few devices that can read the media.
Are there any individuals or organizations producing reports predicting IT trends, rating expected lifespans for technologies such optical disks : e.g. how far into the future will devices capable of reading today's CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs and hard disks be commonly available, likewise for software capable of reading files on them, typically normalised to open formats such as .odt ?
Likewise, are there any impartial research papers out there with figures for anticpated lifespans for CD-ROM (i.e. pressed aluminium), CD-R and DVD-R ? I have figures for CD-ROM of 100-200 years, and 5-25 years for CD-R, but what I've found range from 2 years to 100 years and most appears to be guesswork.
Are there any individuals or organizations producing reports predicting IT trends, rating expected lifespans for technologies such optical disks : e.g. how far into the future will devices capable of reading today's CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, DVD-Rs and hard disks be commonly available, likewise for software capable of reading files on them, typically normalised to open formats such as
Likewise, are there any impartial research papers out there with figures for anticpated lifespans for CD-ROM (i.e. pressed aluminium), CD-R and DVD-R ? I have figures for CD-ROM of 100-200 years, and 5-25 years for CD-R, but what I've found range from 2 years to 100 years and most appears to be guesswork.