[SenjStevo]

5 Months later......

I have almost finished an honours project on the subject of Digital Preservation. Most websites on this subject are aimed almost exclusively at Universities, companies and government organisations. It was my wish therefore to produce a website for the general public to provide practical information on this subject.

Therefore I spent some time designing a Website which talks about some of the issues involved in maintaining digital collections at home.

Basically I need some feedback for anyone who has an interest in the subject. You could be an expert or a complete novice it doesn’t matter.

The website is located here

And I would appreciate anyone who fills out a short questionnaire after browsing it. This is purely for my project evaluation section. The survey is located here

Let me know if there is a problem with these links!


I would also appreciate any comments in this thread because I would like to continue to improve and maintain this website beyond leaving university.


Cheers!




(Original Post)
I'm doing a thesis on Long-term digital preservation in my Uni. Basically I’m trying to find out the impact of technology and methodological changes to a few of the departments in my Uni. I'm doing lots of reading on the subject and have heard it said many times that current digital storage has limited long-term value in comparision to ancient methods.

CDs for example start to degrade after 5 years depending on use. Some of my CDs are only a few years old and are already showing signs of age which is very disappointing. Hard disks and flash memory I don’t have too much info on, while I know both have limited write cycles i’m not sure about their viability as long-term storage mediums. I have heard somewhere that Sansa were selling flash memory with albums on them. If flash is a highly stable format for storage then will we start seeing wide spread read only SD or microSD cards as a medium for selling albums? Whats the life span of these?

I have no attachment to CDs; I consider them pretty fiddly and easy to damage, but I do like having a physical copy in front of me and i'm not alone. We have to consider the possibility that CDs are probably not going to outlive Vinyl; they have none of the “other” qualities associated with the analogue format. When another better physical format comes along CDs will not last. Alternatively the Physical Digital format will completely die. Any comments? Do you think your music collection will be intact in 20 years time?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SenjStevo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm doing a thesis on Long-term digital preservation

As it happens I am currently working as the RA on a Masters level Digital Preservation course, if you are interested PM me for a list of some interesting readings.

In terms of your detailed points, it is all about strategy. Migration and emulation are valid approaches in specifc circumstances, personally I think the technical problems are overegged, except in specific circumstances where you cannot decouple the data from the format the problem is vigilance i.e not waiting till a format starts it's death throes before addressing the issue and perodic checking of data integrity and of course multiple redundant backups.

 

[SenjStevo]

Excellent. I've PM you.

Yes i suppose the strategies available are valid in most circumstances. A lot must depend on economics, especially on a large scale. How do you store your digital music?

 

[NiceCans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SenjStevo /img/forum/go_quote.gif How do you store your digital music?

I encode my music into a large granite block using radiation, it has a half-life of 100,000 years.

Since I use hard drives redundancy is key, I keep several backups.

 

[synaesthetic]

You must've bought some really poorly stamped CDs. I have several music and software CDs that are almost 15 years old and still work perfectly.

I read somewhere that the early CDs were made of a plastic that degraded rapidly under the exposure to sunlight. But I haven't had issue with any.

 

[Pushifer]

Well as for recorded cds they last me 2/3 years tops. The bought cds have that protection layer in the bottom that makes them last longer but will never last a lifetime.

I have all my cds in flac. I have them in 2 different external drives with 10% recovery par files.

This gives me some guaranties even if you drive fails or gains bad sectors.

The best way of making it last is to put you entire collection on a torrent and name it like " sasha sex tapes - $"% "#%"#$ "%"#$"
If you have a problem with your computer just download it from the 100000 sources you will have

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SenjStevo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Excellent. I've PM you. Yes i suppose the strategies available are valid in most circumstances. A lot must depend on economics, especially on a large scale. How do you store your digital music?

On three different external hard drives plus two internal hard drives, the externals are synchronized daily.


Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif You must've bought some really poorly stamped CDs. I have several music and software CDs that are almost 15 years old and still work perfectly. I read somewhere that the early CDs were made of a plastic that degraded rapidly under the exposure to sunlight. But I haven't had issue with any.

The problem was at it's height in the late 80s and confined to a small number from one particular outfit (PDO) - none of my 24 year old CDs has ever failed from CD rot.

 

[japc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SenjStevo /img/forum/go_quote.gif CDs for example start to degrade after 5 years depending on use. Some of my CDs are only a few years old and are already showing signs of age which is very disappointing.

Never happened to me except on really low priced, low quality CDs (Sky was the label I think). Other than that have CDs with, I dunno, 15 years and they're good as new.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif On three different external hard drives plus two internal hard drives, the externals are synchronized daily.

Do you keep them in diferent locations?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

Originally Posted by japc /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you keep them in diferent locations?

One is in my office , two are in my bag which I take to/from work daily, then I have stuff on one of my laptops at home and on the desktop at home..though the desktop is more rarely updated.

 

[SenjStevo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif You must've bought some really poorly stamped CDs. I have several music and software CDs that are almost 15 years old and still work perfectly. I read somewhere that the early CDs were made of a plastic that degraded rapidly under the exposure to sunlight. But I haven't had issue with any.

All my CDs are quite new, post 2000, maybe a few late 90s. Maybe i just need to take care of my CDs better

I really need to start backing stuff up.

 

[robojack]

I believe it really depends on the brand of CDs or DVDs you use. If you use a no-name brand, then yes, degradation can occur even sooner than 2 years, or even a year. High quality discs tend to use higher quality materials when producing discs. From my experience with Taiyo-Yuden produced discs, DVDs and CDs I burned 5 years ago still work as well now as they did back then.

Also noteworthy is the burn speed you use. I find that burning at a lower-speed creates a more stable, easier to read, and possibly longer-lasting disc.

 

[BradJudy]

NIST (US government research group) did a couple of studies on the longevity of CD-R and DVD-R media.

Here's the first one - http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/d...ilityStudy.pdf

Here's the second (sadly, all of the good info is blanked out) - http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/l...ber%202005.pdf

And this is related to the second one - Overview

FWIW: I've heard of at least one pharm company (they have to keep drug info forever) who does long term information storage in microfiche (obviously analog, not digital) stored in an old salt mine. That's some seriously long-term work.

Of course my favorite long-term storage is the Rosetta Disk - Concept —

 

[SenjStevo]

Thats very interesting info thanks. I'd never heard of microfiche, i wonder how long it lasts, probably hundreds of years. Wonder how much that Rosetta Disk cost to make:S

 

[chadbang]

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic /img/forum/go_quote.gif You must've bought some really poorly stamped CDs. I have several music and software CDs that are almost 15 years old and still work perfectly.

Ditto

 

[krmathis]

I say CD have the possibility to be a quite stable long-term storage medium. Several of my CD are 15-20 years old, and still running as new. I am quite sure they will last an additional 20 years, or more..