> From: berg...@merctech.com [mailto:berg...@merctech.com] > > My biggest concern about the longevity of disk drives for off-line storage > would be mechanical. A disk drive has a fair number of moving parts, > which have been designed to move, not sit still for extremely long > periods. Many years ago, disk drives were well known for having problems > spinning up if they were shut down for too long -- typically the problem > was ascribed to stuck bearings, congealed grease, etc
One of my cousins is a very well educated librarian. She told me, decades ago they converted all the old centuries-old fragile paper books to microfiche, which has all now deteriorated, and the centuries-old paper books remain unchanged. She was asking me about data longevity on digital media, which they're currently in process scanning onto. My answer reaffirmed her suspicion that the new digital media is probably less reliable than the original paper, but at least the digital media has the option of being actively upkept, and will survive as long as you do regular upkeep diligence and maintain redundancy. So print the entire contents of every backup on paper and store the paper offsite in a waterproof, fireproof box. ;-) _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
