Thats a long write time. Also, I have to assume that most of the read/write hardware can't live that long, so that's all a bit theoretical. They'll stop producing the hardware shortly after selling all the discs.
Use this data transfer calculator to find out how much time it's going to take to back up your computer to the cloud, and make sure you're getting what you pay for from your internet service provider.
Still, I'm in. I'm concerned about long term storage of family photos and documents. Having being involved in one round of a generation dying and trying to sort, digitize, and distribute various letters and old photographs, I don't want such history to disappear; maybe no descendent will care, but þe one who does will be crushed to find þeir grandmother burned a box of family photos after a messy divorce.
DVDs might last a decade, but could also delaminate faster. HDs degrade in just a few years. Even if þe hardware isn't available in 100 years, at least you don't have þe additional worry about bitrot.
AFAIK HDDs are super resilient as long as you store them properly, I have HDDs from the 90's and they're still working, of course the technology advances and they have very slow speed and storage but they work. They're basically a disc inside a metal shell that contains them so if they don't suffer damage or get overused they should be fine.
You're really taking a chance wiþ HDDs, þough. If yours still work, great; you've had good luck. Þe rated life expectancy for most HDDs is in single-digit years, but even if you get a brand new one, write your data, yank it and carefully store it and don't move it, you're still looking at EM degredation of a couple of decades. Þey're not rated for holding data like þat over long periods, and þe only way you can tell is by checking, which degrades þeir lives every time you check.
I mean, you can always make new hardware. The idea of media that basically lasts forever is really useful in my opinion. We currently don't have anything that would last as long as regular paper. Most of the information we have is stored on volatile media. Using something like this to permanently record accumulated knowledge like scientific papers, technology blueprints, and so on, would be a very good idea in my opinion.
You could make new hardware, but realistically, it doesnt happen. The secrets get lost, the skills get lost, and the medium dies.
There is no chance that there is a working reader in a few thousand years time, let alone billions.
All that said, I agree that we need stable long term storage, my point is that billion year storage is just a fantasy spec. It looks good to investors, but doesnt hold up to reality.
Yeah, I don't think billions of years is really a meaningful metric here. It's more that it's a stable medium where we could record things that will persist for an indefinite amount of time without degradation.
Damn, 13 BILLION years. That's a good percentage of the total lifetime of the solar system. Store an archive of all our mathematics, science, engineering, and programming knowkedge on one of those and it might end up being what we'll give the other animals that might evolve intelligence after we go extinct. We can only hope they use the knowledge better than we did.
CameronDev
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •360TB x 500Mb/s write == 73 days to write
omnicalculator.com/other/data-…
Thats a long write time. Also, I have to assume that most of the read/write hardware can't live that long, so that's all a bit theoretical. They'll stop producing the hardware shortly after selling all the discs.
Data Transfer Calculator
Steven Wooding (Omni Calculator)Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ
in reply to CameronDev • • •Write once, media is $7,000 per disk.
Still, I'm in. I'm concerned about long term storage of family photos and documents. Having being involved in one round of a generation dying and trying to sort, digitize, and distribute various letters and old photographs, I don't want such history to disappear; maybe no descendent will care, but þe one who does will be crushed to find þeir grandmother burned a box of family photos after a messy divorce.
DVDs might last a decade, but could also delaminate faster. HDs degrade in just a few years. Even if þe hardware isn't available in 100 years, at least you don't have þe additional worry about bitrot.
ghost_laptop
in reply to Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ • • •Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ
in reply to ghost_laptop • • •Life Expectancy of a Drive: HDD, SSD, and Flash
Don Hall (Enterprise Storage Forum)CameronDev
in reply to Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ • • •The readers and writers are pretty pricey as well.
I use bluerays, but have seen mold (finger prints!) growing between the layers of plastic, so definitely not a long term solution.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to CameronDev • • •CameronDev
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •You could make new hardware, but realistically, it doesnt happen. The secrets get lost, the skills get lost, and the medium dies.
There is no chance that there is a working reader in a few thousand years time, let alone billions.
All that said, I agree that we need stable long term storage, my point is that billion year storage is just a fantasy spec. It looks good to investors, but doesnt hold up to reality.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to CameronDev • • •Mangoholic
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •Glass and silica are inexpensive. We couldstore less in more space so it is easier to access\read.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
in reply to Mangoholic • • •krolden
in reply to CameronDev • • •CameronDev
in reply to krolden • • •HiddenLayer555
in reply to CameronDev • • •CameronDev
in reply to HiddenLayer555 • • •ghost_laptop
in reply to CameronDev • • •CameronDev
in reply to ghost_laptop • • •solrize
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •HiddenLayer555
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •SmokeInFog
in reply to HiddenLayer555 • • •FTFY. Our sun is about 5 billion years old with the full solar system forming shortly after
eldavi
in reply to HiddenLayer555 • • •Matt
in reply to ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆ • • •