Re: Alternative to Optical Storage????

On 10/3/24 3:13 PM, Nux Vomica wrote:

On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 01:47:00 -0400, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

>
    It's a SERIOUS PROBLEM. We make SO much data now,
    SUCH volume, and at least SOME of it IS important
    for both legal and historical reasons - yet there
    are NO really good archival media.
>

 Very well stated.  This was, of course, the real subject
of my original post.
 I would guess that human beings (a.k.a. Homo sapiens) are
not very far sighted.  We witness this in societal reactions
to COVID-19 and global warming.  It seems that human
civilization is not capable at all of being proactive.
 

>
    Optical disks - esp M-Disks - can LAST ... but they
    are LOW-DENSITY by today's defs by a BIG margin.
    It's also not clear if you'd be able to FIND a
    DVD reader device 25 years from now. Even most
    current PCs/laptops don't COME with those anymore.
>

 BDR optical disks have enough capacity to easily deal with
business, government, or personal documents.
 It is only when we consider multimedia files, especially
videos, that we run into problems.

   Good luck finding a BDR reader device/drivers even
   25 years from now.
   At my last job, they had about 10tb of stuff going back
   like forever - and SOME of it was of legal/historical
   significance but you'd never know exactly WHAT, so
   you had to keep it ALL alive. Other biz that might
   be 100tb easy.
   I remember ONE govt agency once demanded docs going
   back to the *1920s* ... fortunately they had THAT,
   albeit on old yellowed paper. Musta pissed-off the
   feds when they actually delivered that ... 'cause
   then they had to PAY OUT  :-)

>
    The Library Of Congress and Smithsonian are FREAKIN'
    at this point. SO much historical data - but they
    can't even find the hardware/drivers to READ the
    often-proprietary media.
>

 This is another story that needs to be covered.  How will
these and other institutions solve the problem and how can
any solutions be extended to personal computing?
 But since consumer-grade computing is dominated by fashion
and fad, it's not likely that the grubbing corps will produce
long-term storage technology.

   No, they won't. A FEW make adapters, but for HOW
   long ... and the drivers for whatever OS won't
   work forever.
   I have some 8-inch floppies - but NO way to read
   them anymore. Maybe SOME converter biz, but at
   what PRICE ? Even then 8-inch floppies were NOT
   all formatted the same at any level. Every maker
   tended to use their OWN "better" way.
   The govt/NASA stuff - even WORSE situation. Esp
   for NASA literal one-off devices/formats were made.
   For mag/optical ... in THEORY you can probe them
   micron by micron with mag/laser probes and then
   eventually figure out the format. Again $$$ !!!
   So, it's back to baked clay tablets ..... 10k
   years and still readable .......