Hey Dave, solid state hard drives, while expensive, have a very long shelf
life. They are good because there are no moving parts at all, so less wear
and tear on the parts over time. Something to look into for archiving
valuable data. I saw a video of a guy throwing a laptop out of a second
story window, retrieving the hard drive (solid state one) from the wreckage
and plugging it into a new machine to demonstrate it still worked. Not that
I recommend trying that at home, but it's definitely a promising technology.
This isn't the video I saw, but it gets the point across:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4cK0L__B9U
Regards,
Chris
On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 4:34 PM, Dave Torr <> wrote:
> A bit of research shows that most people estimate that a flash memory card
> should not be relied on after about 10 years. This is probably less that a
> good quality CD or DVD. Of course there are many factors that change this.
>
> On 3 March 2010 17:08, Dave Torr <> wrote:
>
> > Flash was never designed for long term storage - all flash devices have a
> > finite number of "write cycles" they can support and are vulnerable to
> > radiation effects and other possible errors - the higher the capacity the
> > more likely an error is. Perfectly manufactured and stored DVDs should
> last
> > for maybe 20 years or so - note the emphasis on perfect!
> >
> > Basically everything deteriorates and as we pack more and more bits in
> > smaller and smaller spaces they become more vulnerable. This site
> >
> http://askville.amazon.com/data-encoding-CDs-DVDs-flash-drives-deteriorate-time-media-safe-forever/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=8683861hassome
> interesting comments - not sure how true they are but they are
> > certainly good guidelines. And even if your chosen media lasts 50 years I
> > can guarantee there will be no equipment that can read it after that
> time.
> > Having been in IT for more than 40 years I have seen many technologies
> come
> > and go - early disks were the size of washing machines and held a few
> > megabytes.
> >
> > If you are really concerned back up to something that is a fairly new
> > technology (and of good quality) - and preferably to two types of device.
> > Every few years read the backups and rewrite them to new disks (or tapes
> or
> > whatever) again of new technology. That way you may stay ahead of the
> game -
> > assuming that the software still exists to read the data.
> >
> > Sorry to be a pessimist but you can't beat acid-free paper stored in good
> > environment - and in several places.....
> >
> >
> > On 3 March 2010 10:27, Pat OMalley <> wrote:
> >
> >> The comments on the deterioration of bird photos and records on CD and
> >> DVD is depressing. What is the evidence of deterioration on flash memory
> >> - is this a more promising medium?
> >>
> >> Pat
> >> www.birding-aus.org
> >> birding-aus.blogspot.com
> >>
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
> >> send the message:
> >> unsubscribe
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> >> to:
> >>
> >
> >
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