Sure, with any number of ECM solutions. At the simplest end many of them simply enforce naming conventions; at the more robust end, they support many different file types for viewing, indexing, etc. and can also provide rich metadata on a document-by-document basis. Some of them have been named in the comments, including but certainly not limited to SharePoint 2007, Cygnet, Documentum, Open Text, FileNet, etc. Any system worth looking at has a web-based interface, at least for searching, and many of them offer for more meaningful interaction as well. Alfresco, Hyland, and SpringCM all have web-based ECM solutions and more comprehensive web-based offerings are available all the time. Oh - and if you're aerospace there are a number of regulatory requirements for information management you'll need to comply with, which does complicate the situation but spending the ducats for software and/or consulting help is probably cheaper than whatever your litigation and regulatory audit support processes cost today. Hope this helps, Jesse Wilkins ECM and other stuff consultant jwilkins13 at gmail dot com

Still not getting it. The immediate question was about media. Part of my response was about readers. You don't have any response here about being able to read the SOFTWARE and FILE FORMATS on the media. Reel-to-reel, that's nice. TI-99, hokay. How about something that can read Word 95 files in 30 years? Zywrite? Wordstar? Alchemy databases? AutoCAD 1.0? dBASE III? Etc. It's NOT the longevity, it's the ability to read what's on them. That's hardware AND software.

You've got to be kidding me - and you didn't respond to my issue, which is file formats. Tried to read a Wordperfect 4.2 or Microsoft Word 1.0 doc lately? WordStar? Xywrite? Geoworks for C64? AutoCAD v2.1? Lotus 1-2-3 v2 with macros? Now think about how much more fantastically complex a Word or Excel 2007 document is, complete with pivot tables, lotsa macro-y goodness, and you really think those will be readable in 30 years? Cause it's not like anyone would do anything important in a complex and/or proprietary format, right?

Right. And that's workable for how many organizations today? And it's not just that - Acrobat is now an ISO standard (32000). Even if you could move everyone over to e.g. OpenOffice, ODF, etc. (and don't get me started about OOXML), it still assumes there is enough interest in 30 years for someone to have created a reader for them. Yes, you or your organization might be able to do that. What about your local municipality, who "standardized" on OOXML? Or the older version of ISO 32000 or ODF that is now deprecated b/c the standards bodies found a critical issue? Just saying.

Again, missing the point. I *know* that CDs - particularly printed or stamped ones as opposed to burned or RW ones - will last plenty of time. What I question is whether you'll have anything that can read that decrepit code in 30 years or that can play that physical media in 30 years. I also take issue with your point that "it'll be easy to re-encode it"...that's only if the disk and software on it are still readable and that's only in isolation. It is not at all easy to re-encode 500GB into a different format whether we're talking about file format OR media; put the two together and there is no easy answer today. NARA's ERA ain't it, the lofty encoding schemes like OAIS and EAD ain't it.

I agree with your first point - in fact it kinda supports mine. "if one looks" - the vast and overwhelming majority of laptops AND their users will not look; if you think there will be RS-232 connectors on those 30-yrs-from-now laptops you have much more faith in manufacturers than I do. Shopped for a laptop with 3.5" lately? WRT VMs, my point above holds equally well - unless you move in different circles than I do ain't a lot of people loading multiple OSs and versions into VMs. And by a lot I mean more than the .01% technically inclined to do so - I mean the folks buying their laptops at Best Circuit FryMart. What about pesky licensing, pesky apps that don't run in VM because they phone home regularly for a license, pesky issues around providing VM that can fully support something as complex as Vista, etc. As to your final point, storing data in the cloud is good WRT storage media but still raises the question of readability. It's not useful for me for Google Docs or S3 to store my PDFs if I have nothing to read them in 30 years. Or is the intent to refresh all of your file formats every 5 years or so? B/c nobody does that today. You may. I may. But that same overwhelming majority doesn't. It also raises the problem of what happens to all that data when Microsoft buys Google, or Google goes broke, or gets nationalized and that service shut down, or or or....On the other hand, refreshing the data onto new media assumes a) you do it while the media and formats on it are still readable and that you refresh the data formats and that there are no things to intrude while that 500GB of data and media and format migration is taking place like a job or life. And that number's only going to increase for most of us.

And what happens when the spring that pops the C64 floppy open finally gives out? The MFM drive? Etc. The hardware won't last forever, and even in a world of eBay goodness that's not really a viable solution for the majority of folks. I further submit that most of us don't have the familial/spousal support to keep 5 old clunkers around and operating.... :)

Someone reminded me in another forum that you could always microfilm everything - microfilm only requires a light source and a magnifying source, and a drop of water in candlelight would work in a pinch. Then again, who wants to film 2 TB of data? :)

Here's the thing. Flash drives will *probably* last long enough. I wouldn't at all be surprised if they were still readable in 20 or 30 years. But a) what's the odds of your current WinUx or iHoloTablet having a usb connector in 30 years? and MUCH more importantly, what's the odds of having anything capable of reading those historic Word 2007, Acrobat 5, or any other type of file format in 20 years? Yes, there are some folks technical enough that they can still read and readily interact with Geoworks, Wordstar, Xywrite, etc. stored on 8" floppy disks. But if you ain't one of them, and I'm happy to admit I ain't, the fact that the flash drive is physically capable of being read in 30 years simply won't matter. That's why I crack up reading various vendors' claims of CDs, DVDs, BDs etc. lasting 50 or 100 or more years. The disks will be readable but you'll have no mechanical or logical way to read what's on them.