Re: About programing, a general question

Once upon a time, James McKenzie <jjmckenzie51@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
However, you are correct that punch cards should last for at least 100
years. A lot longer than magnetic tape, CD and DVD media.

Good tape types (such as DLT) are rated for at least 25 years of shelf
life. DLT is also nice in that the latest (and unfortunately last)
generation of SDLT drives can still read the first generation DLT tapes.

Cards are not that invulnerable either; humidity and temperature changes
will wreak havoc on the cheap card stock, and it will also get brittle
with age. They might still be readable in 100 years if you manually
separate each card and look at it, but that hardly counts (since you
can't feasibly look at individual cards for any useful volume of data).
Also, since cards are a very low-density storage medium, they are much
more vulnerable to losing chunks of data when a box is lost, dropped, or
gets wet.

If you want data/information to last, don't depend on any storage
medium. You have to plan on reading it in every X years (where X may
change as technology changes) and writing it out to current medium.
Also, don't forget to document the data format. The backup software we
use (Arkeia) writes out a basic C program that can extract files to the
header of each tape.

--
Chris Adams <cmadams@xxxxxxxxxx>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.
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