On 24-03-2010 15:33, Scott Courtney wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-03-24 at 13:14 -0500, Josh Fisher wrote:
>    
>>> Agreed. I would not expect a drive to be readable if you sit it on a
>>> shelf for 10 years. It probably would not spin up unless you kept it
>>> in a humidity protected environment.
>>>        
>> All media fails in the long run. It is just a matter of how often you
>> have to refresh the long term storage.
>>      
> Magnetic domains deteriorate over time due to thermal agitation of the
> molecules, stray magnetic fields, etc. The bearings in the drive are
> probably okay for ten years or so in storage, but I would wonder whether
> the lubricating fluids would be stable that long. Also, there is the
> question of whether the drive interfaces will still be supportable in a
> decade. If you had an old MFM or RLL drive from the 1980s or early 1990s
> today, you'd play hell trying to find a controller. If you had a
> controller, you'd play hell trying to find an ISA bus machine to plug it
> into.
>
> Long-term archiving is a tough and complex problem, unfortunately.
>    

What is the best strategy and storage media for long-term backups, say 
to 10 or 20 years (if any)? I ask because I do have an old DLT tape 
drive and some tapes, unusable, because its SCSI controller is no longer 
among us. It is not 10 years old and is already a problem.

-- 
Marcio Merlone


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