[game_preservation] Long-Term Storage

[Captain Commando]

Even if they say this disc will last for 200 years, I don't think the
company is going to be around 200 years when we find out whether or not they
were right :P

Right now, I think the cheapest option is to go with redundant hard drives
due to their storage, cost, and access speed. Use optical media for the
really important stuff that you can't replace. 1TB hard drives are less than
$200 now - for the cost of one of those delkin blu-rays, you can store 40
times the amount. For the cost of 2, you can make it redundant and keep that
drive in storage. If you pay a bit more per GB, you can purchase multiple
smaller, more stable drives, too.

I'm not convinced this long-term storage is the way to go simply because
there's now way of knowing. And remember: data migration is a necessary
thing. Do you really think we'll still be using blu-ray drives 200 years
from now?

On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 5:49 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>
wrote:


> I've not seen this discussed, thought it might be interesting to know what

> people used for long-term storage of anything (not just preserving our

> games. Because of course we can't remove the media from the CD's legally or

> some rubbish ;-) ).

>

> Okay, I myself am poor (both at backing up long term and in the money

> sense). I use external HDD's to backup, not that much space, I want to get

> TB drives (I have one old one I use, but the others are like 250GB, not

> enough!). For more-or-less static stuff, I use DVD's to back the stuff up.

>

> I did wonder if the price/performance point of this kind of media was

> worthwhile *ever* considering the rate of change in technology:

>

> http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/06/27/delkin_200_year_bluray_disc/

>

> £125 a pop. Worth it more then 2 DVD's every X number of years for some

> data?

>

> It doesn't seem any more worth then HDD's (of any type, although solid

> state have inherent advantages).

>

> In any case, for preservationists I do wonder what is used - I hope it

> isn't just tape backups, which are rapidly going out of fashion and space :)

>

> I presume it's mainly based around automated data redundancy and checking

> (so yet more redundancy if something fails).

>

> Well, for hobbists it's going to be a lot smaller scale. It's interesting

> seeing the extremes :) and if any company starts providing a proper

> long-term (and well tested) solution to hardware failure, at a more

> reasonable cost :)

>

> Andrew

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-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
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