But of course, in 30 years, there will be no way to interface the old hardware 
capable of running the old tapes with the old datas to the new hardware 
(remember the coax network ? do you still have a compatible network card and 
all the cables somewhere in your office ? Don't even talking of the move from 
ide to sata for the hard disks).
 
The availabality of data thru time is beginning a great challenge that nobody 
try to solve actually.
 
The archeologists today have an easy way at work, they have paper and so on. 
What will do an archeologist in 200 years with a cd-rom ? What an history we 
will leave for our children if all that got through to year 2500 is the copies 
of copies of movies and tv shows  ? lol
 
Kind regards
 
> Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2011 10:23:09 +0200
> From: yaron AT ARISTO.TAU.AC DOT IL
> Subject: Re: [Networker] long term retention of data and old hardware
> To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
> 
> These days I am trying to push an HSM solution based on Sun/Oracle 
> SAM-FS/QFS technology (obviously, I intend to have at least two copies 
> of the data in two separate locations). Such a solution will let us have 
> a long term archive of our dormant data. My intention is to start with 
> LTO4/5, but I am sure that when LTO7 will come, I will need to migrate 
> the data to LTO7. Regardless of being able to deliver the files back, I 
> still wonder what our ERP DBA will do ten years from now with backups of 
> Oracle 10g when the database will be Oracle 26m and the table format 
> will be completely different (and I don't even care about how people 
> will handle Word 95 files when they run Office 2030).
> 
> On 02/18/11 21:42, Browning, David wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, what is everyone doing in terms of long term
> > retention of data, and still being able to read old tapes?
> >
> >
> >
> > For example, we have thousands of old LTO-2 and LTO-3 tapes. We are
> > looking to upgrade to LTO-5, but then that would mean we can't read our
> > old LTO-2 tapes, unless we keep at least 1, or more, LTO-3 drives.
> > Right now, that really isn't a problem.
> >
> >
> >
> > What happens 5, or 10, years from now, when LTO-3 drives are no longer
> > available for service?
> >
> >
> >
> > Our regulatory requirements are to keep some of our data upwards of 30
> > years, so this question is not going away any time soon.
> >
> >
> >
> > - Dave.
> >
> >
> >
> > David M. Browning Jr.
> >
> > IT Project Coordinator Enterprise Backups and Help Desk
> >
> >
> >
> >
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