Dear Colleagues, Have you backed up your critical data to CD for long term preservation? Are you asking the question, how long will my CD last before I need to
transfer it to another media?
How about your forever type data? The Australian Broadcasting Commission “ABC” in its program Catalyst
presented on Thursday, 25
October 2001 provided the following story. The article is available at the following www address: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s400527.htm Do you have fungus on
your CDs? Which stated:
Nothing changes over time it only gets more interesting. In an article in Business Week: April 20, 1998, Department:
Science & Technology: COMPUTERS titled DATA STORAGE: FROM
DIGITS TO DUST
the following was stated. The data lost from the Viking Mars mission,
for example, was trapped on decaying digital magnetic tape, forcing NASA to
call mission specialists out of retirement to help the agency reconstruct key
data. ``Digital
information lasts forever, or five years--whichever comes first,'' says
Jeff Rothenberg, senior computer scientist at RAND Corp. Forget
forever. Under less-than-optimal storage conditions, digital tapes and disks,
including CD-ROMs and optical drives, might deteriorate about as fast as
newsprint--in 5 to 10 years. Tests by the National Media Lab, a St. Paul
(Minn.)-based government and industry consortium, show that tapes might
preserve data for a decade, depending on storage conditions. Disks--whether
CD-ROMs used for games or the type used by some companies to store pension
plans--may become unreadable in five years. Happy Archiving! Regards, Laurie Mr Daniel Lawrance [Laurie]
Varendorff, ARMA Consultant/Trainer/Tutor/Presenter: Records and information Management Imaging and Micrographic Specialist with 25 years experience The Varendorff Consultancy The Australian Distributor for
A&P International Scanner & Micrographic Resolution Test Targets Visit our www site: http://www.pressenter.com/~apintl/ ABN: 77 836 801 165 27 Ronneby Rd, Lesmurdie, Western
Australia 6076 - AUSTRALIA PHONE: +61 8 9291 6925 - MOBILE: +61
0417 094 147 EMAIL: Laurie.Varendorff@Bigpond.com |