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Desert Bus posted:One of my friends works at a programming company and they have a division that still puts things on to punch cards because that is what some of their clients still require. It's kind of funny to think that even with all the methods of data storage invented in the last 40 years or so, paper is still the only thing that we know for sure will still be here hundreds of years from now and retain it's data. Assuming it's stored correctly of course. As far as I remember, the figures (on average) are something like this: Magnetic media - 10 to 20 years Factory pressed CDs/DVDs/Blu-ray - 30 to 50 years Archival quality CDRs/DVD-Rs/Recordable Blu-Ray - 100 years SSDs and other flash based media - 3 to 6 months unpowered, longer based on write cycle, max probably 10 years Paper - stored in a constant temperature/humidity environment - indefinite I keep reading stories from time to time about newly researched mediums that could last millennia, but as far as I know nothing has made it to market yet even in the high end. There may be some really esoteric stuff in use by the NSA or some such, but I haven't read baout it yet. If anyone has any inside knowledge of this I'd love to hear about it.
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Nov 27, 2014 23:08
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HEY GAL posted:International standard for microfilm is 500 years. I did not know this! Is microfilm considered a different beast from microfiche? I ask because I'm old enough to remember libraries back in the day having issues with certain sections of their microfiche catalogs that were often referred to going "halloween" on them. Stuff like VE-day, the moon landing, Watergate, etc. would eventually start to have their black areas go to a weird, sickly orange or purple hue over time and use. Though I guess any estimated lifespan for recorded media assumes it's simply being stored and not used. The bulbs on those old microfiche readers put out a crap-ton of light and heat. Couldn't be good for the film.
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Nov 28, 2014 08:20
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Factory Factory posted:I don't know if this is a brilliant idea, a dumb idea, or something that is both simultaneously, but: M-Disc. What tells us about e.g. Egypt? poo poo carved into stone. So use your DVD/BD burner laser to engrave a stone disc. Woah, now that's what I was askin' about. I've never heard of this before! According to the Wikipedia article about them ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC ), they are "more durable" than conventional CD-R/DVD-rs, but I followed the first reference link accredited to the "Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division". Quoting from this report in the last paragraph of the second page summary, "None of the Millenniata media suffered any data degradation at all. Every other brand tested showed large increases in data errors after the stress period. Many of the discs were so damaged that they could not be recognized as DVDs by the disc analyzer." Wowza. Sweet stuff if it's not all hype.
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Nov 29, 2014 07:05
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Jabor posted:Note that having a different structure at the data layer is how commercially pressed disks already work. They only real improvement claimed is using something similar (instead of a laser-activated dye) in recordable media, which really doesn't justify the analogies being drawn. Well I'm certainly not going to defend them, but I think that their "trade secret" is whatever this recording media is made of. "Glassy carbon" as the wiki page puts it. That really is the Achilles Heel of all optical media like CDs and DVDs. The plastic component of the discs can last an extremely long time in proper storage conditions, but in pressed discs you get "disc rot" which is where the aluminum layer corrodes over time. I actually have one or two very old CDs from the mid-80s that have this occurring to them. With recordable discs the organic dye layer oxides as well, just much faster than the aluminum in factory pressed ones. So if these jokers actually did manage to come up with some sort of very inert carbon as the recording layer, it could conceivably last a very long time in ideal storage conditions.
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Nov 29, 2014 20:39
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Drano posted:Worked at Sears in 2000 and remember a Philips (possibly Pioneer) 720p 42'' plasma demo area being set up, single model listed at $25,000. Wait, paint ABOVE the set? Like on the wall? Did plasmas outgas something nasty or something?
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Mar 6, 2016 19:48
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