Re: [ARSCLIST] Longevity of data tape?--

[Damien Moody <dmoody@xxxxxxx>]

I've been looking into this issue myself, and I've come to one conclusion. 

Build giant pyramids - twice the size of the pyramids in Egypt, lots of them, and hand-etch into the stone the binary code of digital A/V files. GUARANTEED to be there 10,000 years from now, plus whatever civilization finds them will consider us far-sighted geniuses. 

Damien J. Moody
Information Technology Services
Library of Congress

>>> yiddishsong@xxxxxxxxx 06/10/05 9:46 AM >>>

Is there any information around about what is being done for long-term preservation of digital video? Uncompressed video files are very large, 27mb for every second of video at 30 fps. A full length movie can easily fill a small hard-drive.

Anonymous SET ARSCLIST DIGEST <KIrelan@xxxxxxxx> wrote: I appreciate the numerous references to migrating data tapes every 5 years or so. However, that should not be misinterpreted to mean simple physical migration but should include a change of file format if warranted.

As for the physical make-up of data tape I'm not sure. I do know that DV-CAM, R-DAT and other like miniature digital tape types are manufactured using evaporated metal. This method yields the most unstable tapes and should be used only for production and storage in the 3 - 5 year time frame only. I personally have seen tapes of both formats generate huge error counts after only a couple years.

Kevin Irelan




RA Friedman, Archivist
Freedman Jewish Music Archive
University Of Pennsylvania

Webmaster, Yiddish-American Digital Archive
(Not affiliated with University of Pennsylvania)
http://yiddishsong.org
Restored 78s in Real Audio

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