Data Storage over time

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#505301 12-Aug-2011 07:04

if it's a family tree I presume we aren't talking about gobs and gobs of data here. Is it a small enough amount to actually print off? Paper, properly stored, last hundreds of years.

SaltyNZ

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#505304 12-Aug-2011 07:19

NonprayingMantis: Paper

Please hand your geek badge back to Mauricio. We'll need you gone in an hour, thanks.

Anyway, as I was saying, you need to use your microelectromechanical hammer & chisel to carve the information quantumwise onto the event horizon of a micro black hole from the LHC. Holographic universe string theory guarantees your information will remain safe for on the order of 10^14x the lifetime of a proton.

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rvangelder

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#505316 12-Aug-2011 08:15

you could print the family tree graph directly to microfiche. it's what the national archives would use.

DonGould

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#505348 12-Aug-2011 09:39

SaltyNZ: Please hand your geek badge back to Mauricio. We'll need you gone in an hour, thanks.

Humm... I think he should be escorted from the building and his pass taken. With such suggestions I'm not sure he can be trusted to just leave on his own accord. ;)

We did a big wall chart a few years back for someone wanting a family tree. The guy was going to frame them for his kids. Should have been quite cool.

Media transfer is an interesting issue. The Greeks got it reasonable right using stone, 4,000 years and counting?

I was chatting to my dad recently about tracking down some Country Calendar shows that he presented in the late 60's. Assuming they're still in the archive, I wonder what format they're in and how they can be got back to something I can use today?

The national film unit in Avalon (now part of Weta?) used to have a fire proof bunker for old file and images were slowly transferred to safety film.

At my parents place we have Super8 film, VHS tapes, 8mm tapes and DVD. That's before I think about the generations of photos on a range of papers that are now getting to the point of needing archive within 40 years due to colour fade.

So this problem is not new.

I did like the idea someone suggested of locking up a whole netbook. That does sort of cover the bases a little better.

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#505353 12-Aug-2011 09:53

I have a Betamax tape of myself at 4 years of age on Rompa Room. :-) Had that transferred to DVD a few years ago for mum & dad. Wasn't too expensive just for the one, but if you needed to do more than a few it would pay to scrounge your own Beta player.

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Zeon

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#505375 12-Aug-2011 10:37

What about Tape?

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raytaylor

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#505384 12-Aug-2011 10:58

Zeon: What about Tape?

With regard to tape - it degrades over time. If you store a tape near a speaker, the magnets in the back of the speaker will slowly suck the data off them over time. This happens to audio cassettes stored next to a stereo speaker.

My stepfather used to run a music store in the early 90's. When he closed it, all the tapes were put into storage on top of the stereo speakers from the various stereos and hifi systems he had in stock.
Over 15 years most of the tapes can hardly be played back. Discovered this when i went looking for some Doors albums.

Printing
This woman has spent about 10 years collecting various trees. The trees, newspaper articles and photos and all the other information she has scanned into the computer would fill a large wardrobe. She cant keep this in her granny flat as she is running out of space and doesnt want to leave the kids to deal with it when she passes. So she is thinking of slowly throwing away anything she has on the computer and just keeping originals like photos.

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SaltyNZ

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#505385 12-Aug-2011 10:58

Zeon: What about Tape?

Well, actually. I bought an HDV video camera when our son was born about 4 years ago. The hard disk and SD card handy-cams were already available then but I decided not to go for one. Tape, properly stored, can last a looong time.

The Betamax of me was about 25 years old and almost all of it was still perfect (well, as perfect as you would expect having been recorded off air, anyway). There was a little degradation at the beginning of the program, but that was it.

So when buying a camera I bought one that uses tape. It's more of a pain in the butt to import into the computer to make something watchable out of, but those tapes will be kept safe out of our house - most of them are in my drawer at work - and I expect them to still be useable when my kids are adults or older. You still have the problem of finding something to read them with, but that's a given no matter what.

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DonGould

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#505390 12-Aug-2011 11:06

SaltyNZ: most of them are in my drawer at work

Hope you're not working for Early Start. Wife told me with sadness that all the gift cards she had done for one of their staff have been lost as they were not allowed back in the building to clear personal items.

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Linuxluver

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#505400 12-Aug-2011 11:28

DonGould:
SaltyNZ: most of them are in my drawer at work

Hope you're not working for Early Start. Wife told me with sadness that all the gift cards she had done for one of their staff have been lost as they were not allowed back in the building to clear personal items.

+1

NEVER keep personal stuff (or stuff that's important to you personally) at work.

Begging for trouble.

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#505401 12-Aug-2011 11:31

Linuxluver:

NEVER keep personal stuff (or stuff that's important to you personally) at work.

Begging for trouble.

Well, it's a bit of a toss up. This building has 24x7 security and fire monitoring so the tapes are a lot less likely to burn or be stolen than at home. I doubt anyone where is going to prevent me from removing my personal items from the drawer when I leave. What is 2degrees going to do with a bunch of home movie tapes?

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freitasm

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#507141 16-Aug-2011 09:39

What about the Milenniata (http://millenniata.com)?

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SaltyNZ

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#507142 16-Aug-2011 09:42

freitasm: What about the Milenniata (http://millenniata.com)?

I think the fact that it says 'PREORDER' right there on the front page indicates it's not quite ready for the masses. :-)

EDIT: Also, even printed CDs & DVDs decay. The US Library of Congress has done a lot of research on it. Apparently there is mould that likes to eat polycarbonate.

I, for one, welcome our new plastic digesting slime overlords.

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wreck90

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#507151 16-Aug-2011 10:06

raytaylor: I have a customer who wants to have a suitable backup copy of the various family tree files on her computer which she can pass on to the next generation of her family when the time comes.

So i was thinking about it and thought
- Blank CDROM only lasts 10 years
- Memory stick or thumb drive is probably not that reliable when presented with static electricity in a handbag

My answer was an external hard drive. I can still read a 200mb hard drive from the 80's

Can anyone else suggest any suitable media? Hard drive is the best i can come up with.

There is nothing you could do today to be absolutely certain it will be around in even 30 years times.

Storage device electrics change, operating systems and file systems become obsolete , physical components and media degrade, online storage providers go broke and lose data.

You need an continuous backup plan which can be passed on to the next generation of family members.

Store copies in dropbox cloud storage, two hard drives (one on your pc, and , an offline backup drive), and , perhaps an archival CD/DVD .

Then, every so often, you need to verify the integrity of different copies. As time goes on, you can discard obsolete backup technologies as you move on to newer methods.

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#507155 16-Aug-2011 10:20

The only thing really is... paper. Acid free paper, stored under climate controlled conditions.

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