89 lines
4.4 KiB
HTML
89 lines
4.4 KiB
HTML
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<base href="https://beckmeyer.us/">
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<title>Volatile Mediums – Joel Beckmeyer's Blog</title>
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<a href="https://beckmeyer.us/">Joel Beckmeyer's Blog</a>
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Links:
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<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
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<li><a href="/contact/">Contact</a></li>
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<li><a href="/posts/">Posts</a></li>
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<div class="body-content">
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<div class="title-header">
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<h1>Volatile Mediums</h1>
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<div class="title-header-date">
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<time>Friday, January 29, 2021</time>
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<p>I’ve recently been thinking a lot about storage mediums [1] – especially in the long-term.</p>
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<p>Technology has made a lot of progress. Digital storage mediums started out only being
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able to store <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_drive">224KB on a tape drive</a>
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for an average lifetime of <a href="https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/"><em>up to</em> 30 years</a>.
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Now, we can store terrabytes of data on hard drives and solid-state drives. However,
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no one ever really answered the question about long-term storage.</p>
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<p>(Note: the following is based off an assumption that the storage medium is only
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being used to make backups or archive data. The device itself could be unplugged and stored
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when no backup is in progress.)</p>
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<p>Even though <em>theoretically</em> hard drives could store data for 20+ years, random bit flips, drive
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failure, etc. all make hard drives too volatile of an option. As always, of course
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redundancy takes away some of these issues.</p>
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<p>SSDs are in an even worse position: they cost significantly more than hard drives
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per TB right now, and last I heard, there were still issues with bit fade when
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unpowered.</p>
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<p>CD/DVD is sounding a lot better, but there are some serious issues here too.
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Variable quality directly impacts the storage lifetime. Physically storing the
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discs is a lot more risky since the disc itself doesn’t have as much built-in
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protection as a hard drive or SSD has. You’ll need a much larger quantity to
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store the terrabytes of data that you can easily dump on one hard drive. And finally, life
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expectancy is still fairly low – while manufacturers of recordable discs (the ‘R’ in CD-R, DVD-R, etc.)
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claim life expectancies of 100-200 (!) years under optimal conditions, others are <em>slightly</em> more conservative,
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<a href="https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4/">giving an estimate of 30 years</a>.
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Oh, and remember how I mentioned this is for recordable discs? That means they’re single write.
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The random access (RW - CD-RW, DVD-RW, etc.) discs have even lower life expectancies.</p>
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<p>All in all, humanity has not gotten very far with the digital storage medium.
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All of these life expectancies have an inconsequential variance when we zoom out
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to the century view of history.</p>
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<p>[1] And no, I’m not talking about the kind you pay to see your dead great-great-aunt to figure out if
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you’re actually related to George Washington.</p>
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<p><em>This is intended to be the beginning of a learning series/personal study on the issues surrounding
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information preservation, digital permanence, and their related issues.</em></p>
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</div>
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<hr class="dont-show">
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<div class="footer">
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<p>Have any questions? Let me know on <a href="https://matrix.to/#/@joel:thebeckmeyers.xyz">Matrix</a>, or start a discussion on <a href="https://social.beckmeyer.us/TinfoilSubmarine">Fediverse</a>!</p>
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