On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:36:05 +0200, "Rob Turk"
wrote:

"RPR" wrote in message
roups.com...
Basically you'll have to copy the data to state of the art media about
every decade. Don't try to store spare drives for the future, that
doesn't usually work - electromechanical devices age when they're not
in use too.

In addition to Ralf-Peter's comment, you better think long and hard about
how you will be accessing that data 50 years from now, from an application
point of view. 50 years from now, the computing devices will be radically
different from today's PC's. Unless you have documented every bit about the
format of the files you stored and the environment you need to recreate the
information, even migration to state of the art media will not help.

Consider a Word Perfect 4.2 file from 20 years ago. You'll need some effort
today to open and read such a file. Because the format is relatively simple,
you can still read the text using any hex editor. But recreating the page
formatting maybe harder already.

Ok so a lot of converters do an incomplete job, but is this really so
complicated? Save a copy of the application(s) and maybe the OS that
ran it with the data. Between backwards compatibility and improving
emulation technology it might be more doable than you think.

Also keeping data for 50 years doesn't necessarily imply keeping
storage devices for 50 years. Periodic upgrades of the storage and
maybe even the file format of the data might be what needs to happen
to realistically keep useable information for many decades. A major
overhaul like this around every 10 years seems to be working for me
pretty well. Waiting 15 years or more tends to be problematic.

Your mileage may vary and, well, the past is not always a good
indicator of the future.