Back in 1999 or so, I was on the team that helped Minnesota Public Radio choose a long-term storage format for their (extensive and valuable!!) audio archives, which they were about to digitize.
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@inthehands My very non-technical historian husband says you should have multiple types of media and multiple locations.
@ClimateJenny @inthehands On different tectonic plates.
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@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands The trouble with extremely durable high-density media is that reading them still requires sophisticated machines. In 100 years time, you probably won't find one that works, nor instructions for building one.
@mansr @inthehands What if it's just barcodes?
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@mansr @inthehands What if it's just barcodes?
@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands How are you going to store the instructions for decoding them?
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@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands How are you going to store the instructions for decoding them?
@mansr @inthehands Why would you need to? You only need to describe the format.
It's not a DVD or DLT, that requires precise physics to decode.
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@mansr @inthehands Why would you need to? You only need to describe the format.
It's not a DVD or DLT, that requires precise physics to decode.
@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands So where will you store the description then? You can't expect anyone to just look at a bar/2D code and infer the arithmetic required to decode it.
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@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands So where will you store the description then? You can't expect anyone to just look at a bar/2D code and infer the arithmetic required to decode it.
@mansr @inthehands In a few human languages, on pages scattered throughout to protect them. With diagrams.
We did it with a gold record, and that was for aliens.
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@mansr @inthehands In a few human languages, on pages scattered throughout to protect them. With diagrams.
We did it with a gold record, and that was for aliens.
@megatronicthronbanks @inthehands We have yet to receive confirmation that anyone has successfully decoded that gold record.
Fair enough, though, you could engrave a decoding manual in human languages, although it would be more than a few pages (a few hundred more likely if you want to be thorough), and you'd want translations to cover at least the major language families of today.
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RE: https://glammr.us/@overholt/117049333496122205
Back in 1999 or so, I was on the team that helped Minnesota Public Radio choose a long-term storage format for their (extensive and valuable!!) audio archives, which they were about to digitize.
The conclusion we came to was that there was •no• storage medium that met their long-term preservation goals — true then, and almost certainly still true today. The best approach is perpetual and redundant forward copying of the data, from one physical storage device to another.
An archive isn’t a physical thing; it's a process.
I managed the computers for my dad’s video store in the late twentieth and early 21st centuries (1995 - 2007).
The store’s rental software was based around a MS SQL server in RAID 1 and I replaced both drives annually just to be safe. Even then, I ended up having to do an emergency recovery because I moved to another country and let the replacement schedule slip.
So the only way to store data long-term is to re-establish the Knights Templar and task them with guarding it.
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@Eurospoofer @inthehands You still have to solve the availability of reading hardware and software in 100 years.
@jernej__s @Eurospoofer @inthehands
This is already a problem with proprietary systems where the vendor goes out of business but the data has to be retained and usable for at least 7 years for legal reasons.
I worked at a bank in this situation and it was a giant pain because the system couldn’t run on any modern / approved operating system so it couldn’t be hosted in any location without massive security issues and mitigations.
So the first step is open data formats that can be maintained
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RE: https://glammr.us/@overholt/117049333496122205
Back in 1999 or so, I was on the team that helped Minnesota Public Radio choose a long-term storage format for their (extensive and valuable!!) audio archives, which they were about to digitize.
The conclusion we came to was that there was •no• storage medium that met their long-term preservation goals — true then, and almost certainly still true today. The best approach is perpetual and redundant forward copying of the data, from one physical storage device to another.
An archive isn’t a physical thing; it's a process.
For me: nine external HDDs that I’ve collected one a year for the past ten before prices went up. Rotate around which one is updated, using SD cards as the source for the copy, each card concentrating on a specific directory or directories.
It certainly is a process that has to be done on a schedule or it will never consistently be done.
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@inthehands My very non-technical historian husband says you should have multiple types of media and multiple locations.
3-2-1 Rule:
3 copies
2 different storage mediums
1 offsite (not the Cloud) -
RE: https://glammr.us/@overholt/117049333496122205
Back in 1999 or so, I was on the team that helped Minnesota Public Radio choose a long-term storage format for their (extensive and valuable!!) audio archives, which they were about to digitize.
The conclusion we came to was that there was •no• storage medium that met their long-term preservation goals — true then, and almost certainly still true today. The best approach is perpetual and redundant forward copying of the data, from one physical storage device to another.
An archive isn’t a physical thing; it's a process.
@inthehands "An archive isn’t a physical thing; it's a process" I need to tattoo this on my forehead or something
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