Interesting read. But what was not said was "Why?" (Or better yet, "Why should I NOT archive?") Generally the article covered some good points about volatility, life expectancy, etc. But he was a bit dismissive of the technology changes. He said,
Use a file system or format that you know will be readable in the future, and store the data as plain files. FAT, NTFS, HFS, EXT, ISO 9660, UDF, etc., or any of their variants, should be readable for some time.
But how do you know what will be readable for some time? What would be better is that periodically you should take whatever is in archive and reformat to a newer standard. That assumes, of course, that there are no legal issues with changing the format of the data. Most people who archive do so for legal reasons, but I don't think the courts have really addressed the authority of such documents. Electronic documents can be changed, file dates faked, etc., so legal documents maybe need something other than just archiving. Maybe Randy will chime in with some legal guidance on that area. But if you really think you or your descendants might need this data 100 years from now, you (and they) will need to periodically upgrade to whatever is the more modern storage technology. I doubt many of us have 9 track tape machines today (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape ).
And he sort of hints at the fact that in addition to data, you might need to store not only the application, but the entire OS on which the application runs. But again that assumes that that software will be supported on future hardware through some emulation. Let's say I have some 5.25 flippy floppy drives that have AllWrite! documents on them. Are they going to be easy to read even today, much less 100 years from now? Even if I did a bit-for-bit transfer of those flippy floppy drives, where would I get the TRS-DOS operating system to run AllWrite! ? Where is the hardware to read the disks, run the OS, run the software? But if those documents were important to me, I should/would have imported them into some other word processor, then again and again into today's WP like Word, and replaced or augmented the archive with newer versions. So beside my AllWrite! flippy floppy would be a modern USB drive with the same document in Word, maybe. The original would be my "proof" copy of how the original was, the USB drive would have a currently-readable version. I might suggest you store a "Rosetta Stone" explanation, in detail, of what is on the antique media for that poor sap 100 years from now who has to figure how how to get a 100 year old USB 3 drive to work in his USB 57 quantum foam storage machine of the future.
www.pcworld.com
