47 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
47 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "Volatile Mediums"
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tags: ["Volatile Mediums"]
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date: 2021-01-29T23:36:00-05:00
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draft: false
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---
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I've recently been thinking a lot about storage mediums [1] -- especially in the long-term.
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Technology has made a lot of progress. Digital storage mediums started out only being
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able to store [224KB on a tape drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_drive)
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for an average lifetime of [*up to* 30 years](https://blog.storagecraft.com/data-storage-lifespan/).
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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.
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(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.)
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Even though *theoretically* 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.
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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.
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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 *slightly* more conservative,
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[giving an estimate of 30 years](https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4/).
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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*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.*
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