[LINK] Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge

[Kim Holburn]

On 2010/Apr/07, at 9:02 AM, Stilgherrian wrote:

> On 06/04/2010, at 10:58 PM, Kim Holburn wrote:
>> I found an article in New Scientist (30 Jan 2010) on a subject we  
>> have
>> discussed before here.  How long our mounting cloud of digital data
>> will last.  Compared with say Babylonian cuniform tablets from 3500
>> years ago the answer is not long.   They have a chart:
>> Flash memory: 10 Years
>> Magnetic tape: about 20 years
>> Rewritable CDs and DVDs: 7 years
>> Most CD-R and DVD+R, DVD-R, audio CD and Movie DVDs: 26 years
>> Special gold CD-R: 100 years
>> Hard disks: no-one knows.
>
> I'd have thought that for hard drives the limiting factor wouldn't  
> be the life of the magnetic medium but the mechanical life of the  
> drive. Machines wear out. and "no-one knows"? I thought the mean  
> time until failure for HDDs would be pretty well known by now -- and  
> it'd be in a single digit of years. Can anyone confirm?

The trouble is that hard drives are getting higher storage densities  
with each new generation - smaller and smaller bits.  The smaller the  
bit the more bits likely to be corrupted in a damaged spot and the  
shorter the likely archive time.  And the less easy it would be to  
"read" if the drive mechanism was damaged.  No-one knows how long  
modern hard disks will last and by the time we do have an idea we will  
be using media with much higher storage density and with an unknown  
but probably shorter working life.


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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