Win11 still has the option to create a recovery DVD. This seems rather
redundant when so few PCs come with a drive.
However, I thought I'd look at two portable drives I have in a cupboard;
not used for about 7 years, a Lite-on combo and a Blu-ray writer. Both
worked perfectly, as did a few DVDs I'd written with them. No sign of
any fail.

I wonder how long modern digital files will last.
I know quite a bit about ancient Latin & Greek texts; paper, vellum,
papyrus; about how they survived on monastery shelves, in rubbish dumps,
in hidden caves.
My favourites are;
1. A book of Catullus' poems found stuffed into a vase, recovered more
than 10 centuries after being buried.
2. A palimpsest of Archimedes; the original having been washed out and
overwritten with a Christian psalter.

I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will
know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.

Ed

On 10/2/2023 6:04 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> Win11 still has the option to create a recovery DVD. This seems rather
> redundant when so few PCs come with a drive.
> However, I thought I'd look at two portable drives I have in a cupboard;
> not used for about 7 years, a Lite-on combo and a Blu-ray writer. Both
> worked perfectly, as did a few DVDs I'd written with them. No sign of
> any fail.
>
> I wonder how long modern digital files will last.
> I know quite a bit about ancient Latin & Greek texts; paper, vellum,
> papyrus; about how they survived on monastery shelves, in rubbish dumps,
> in hidden caves.
> My favourites are;
> 1. A book of Catullus' poems found stuffed into a vase, recovered more
> than 10 centuries after being buried.
> 2. A palimpsest of Archimedes; the original having been washed out and
> overwritten with a Christian psalter.
>
> I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will
> know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.
That's okay in my mind. The old stuff was better written, more
informative, and had none of the god awful drawbacks of modern social media.
--
Jeff Barnett

On 10/02/2023 8:04 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> Win11 still has the option to create a recovery DVD. This seems rather
> redundant when so few PCs come with a drive.
> However, I thought I'd look at two portable drives I have in a cupboard;
> not used for about 7 years, a Lite-on combo and a Blu-ray writer. Both
> worked perfectly, as did a few DVDs I'd written with them. No sign of
> any fail.
>
> I wonder how long modern digital files will last.
> I know quite a bit about ancient Latin & Greek texts; paper, vellum,
> papyrus; about how they survived on monastery shelves, in rubbish dumps,
> in hidden caves.
> My favourites are;
> 1. A book of Catullus' poems found stuffed into a vase, recovered more
> than 10 centuries after being buried.
> 2. A palimpsest of Archimedes; the original having been washed out and
> overwritten with a Christian psalter.
>
> I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will
> know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.
>
> Ed
I have never had a DVD/CD fail. Some of mine are over 7 years old.

On 10/2/2023 8:04 AM, Ed Cryer wrote:
> Win11 still has the option to create a recovery DVD. This seems rather redundant when so few PCs come with a drive.
> However, I thought I'd look at two portable drives I have in a cupboard; not used for about 7 years, a Lite-on combo and a Blu-ray writer. Both worked perfectly, as did a few DVDs I'd written with them. No sign of any fail.
>
> I wonder how long modern digital files will last.
> I know quite a bit about ancient Latin & Greek texts; paper, vellum, papyrus; about how they survived on monastery shelves, in rubbish dumps, in hidden caves.
> My favourites are;
> 1. A book of Catullus' poems found stuffed into a vase, recovered more than 10 centuries after being buried.
> 2. A palimpsest of Archimedes; the original having been washed out and overwritten with a Christian psalter.
>
> I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.
>
> Ed

An M-Disc has a claimed retention of a thousand years, but
that is just the data recording layer. The polycarbonate disc
surrounding it, I've not seen any claims how long a thing
like that could last. Some drives have the keyword, written
on the tray. That means they should at least be able to burn one.

https://www.amazon.com/LG-Super-Internal-Blu-ray-Rewriter/dp/B00E7B08MS

And there was an article recently in the news, about
some new data storage material with very good characteristics.
At this point, a lab curiosity. Google of course, won't
cough up a news article like that.

Flash memory (floating gate), by comparison, may last ten years.

Hard drives may outlast Flash, but it's hard to say how many
years into the future, the spindle could be relied upon, to still
spin. The lube in the FDB motor, may not be indefinitely stable.
There is a coating on the hard drive platter, which "scavenges free
radicals", as an example of someone trying to make the coating
last for an extended period of time. Helium filled hard drives
(I own just one), will definitely not last forever. And without
a "refill port", there is no easy way to rejuvenate them (the
mechanical lid is welded, the gas lid uses an adhesive to hold
the gas). The details on the top of the drive, hint at the
breathing or sealed status of a hard drive. The Helium drive
has a SMART Helium pressure level statistic, but this is
poorly documented and may just be the imagination of people
at this point :-) It would be nice if the companies would document
this stuff. I don't even know if the Helium internal pressure is above
atmospheric or is close to atmospheric.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/FzXvcvRQ/Helium-versus-air-breather-HDD.gif

I think I would bet my farm on an optical media, as time capsule material.
The optical drives to read them, not so much :-)

Record your thoughts on stone tablets, and all will be well.
It has to be the right kind of stone of course.

Using cutting lasers, I would think you could cut the sheet
metal of your choice, to record your thoughts.

I know, I know, make a monolith out of something and
write on it "all these planets are yours, except Europa".
That will amuse the kids of the future.

Do you see how classy this looks ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_monolith

Paul

On 10/02/2023 12:57 PM, Jeff Barnett wrote:
> I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will
> know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.
This should be a big concern for the country. The emphasis of solar and
wind energy, is creating a significant vulnerability in our energy system.

One series of tornadoes could significantly compromise the energy
system. I remember in the 1960's when because of a series of tornadoes
in the Fort Wayne area, you could not buy any gas for days because all
of the gas pumps in the city were run by electricity. At that time
there were no computers and data banks.

Additionally solar can only be used half of the day, and as a Sailor I
know wind is not reliable. If it was it would not have taken over 6
weeks for my ancestors to sail from Europe to America in the 1830's.

If the energy system is compromised how much data will be lost.

And yet the government is forcing the use of electric vehicle on an
overtaxed system. It does not compute!

Personal all of my genealogy research could be wiped out by simply
turning off the switch. Will a data bank or DVD/CD last a thousand
years? The Book of Kells, the Doomsday book and many others can still
be read by simply turning the page.

knuttle:

> Will a data bank or DVD/CD last a thousand years?

CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are known to deteriorate rather rapidly
(50-100 years), becase of some organic chemistry going on,
heat and light accelerating the process. Store your -Rs in
a cool and dry place, and never ever write upon them -- even
with special marker pens.

--
() ascii ribbon campaign -- against html e-mail
/\ www.asciiribbon.org -- against proprietary attachments

On 10/4/2023 9:07 AM, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> knuttle:
>
>> Will a data bank or DVD/CD last a thousand years?
>
> CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are known to deteriorate rather rapidly
> (50-100 years), becase of some organic chemistry going on,
> heat and light accelerating the process. Store your -Rs in
> a cool and dry place, and never ever write upon them -- even
> with special marker pens.
>

The only failure I had, was some Memorex CD-RW that went "transparent"
in only three months. And that was, maybe, 20 years ago. Memorex of
course, never made any of that media itself, but bought it from
someone else.

You can try these, if you want a thousand years. Apparently, the
thousand year limitation is caused by the polycarbonate plastic
(when stored in archival conditions).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

Notice that in the Wikipedia article, there is an M-DISC icon
on the tray of the example drive. None of my optical drives
have the logo.

Paul

On 2023-10-02 14:04, Ed Cryer wrote:
> Win11 still has the option to create a recovery DVD. This seems rather
> redundant when so few PCs come with a drive.
> However, I thought I'd look at two portable drives I have in a cupboard;
> not used for about 7 years, a Lite-on combo and a Blu-ray writer. Both
> worked perfectly, as did a few DVDs I'd written with them. No sign of
> any fail.
>
> I wonder how long modern digital files will last.
> I know quite a bit about ancient Latin & Greek texts; paper, vellum,
> papyrus; about how they survived on monastery shelves, in rubbish dumps,
> in hidden caves.
> My favourites are;
> 1. A book of Catullus' poems found stuffed into a vase, recovered more
> than 10 centuries after being buried.
> 2. A palimpsest of Archimedes; the original having been washed out and
> overwritten with a Christian psalter.
>
> I doubt digital media will come near to that. Future historians will
> know more about ancient Rome than they do of us.

Maybe not related, but I heard that sales of digital media doubled this
year around here. Meaning music CDs, I understand.

--
Cheers,
Carlos E.R.