Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
The digital media will not last for millenia. Also, digital media tends to become obsolete.
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Do you think that there will be LP (vinyl) media players in 200 years? (That's analog, not digital.)
Digital preservation falls in to 2 major categories.
1. Willingness to copy to new technology. Laugh if you will, most of the "lost" data, (from places like NASA) was because nobody was willing to
pay for the new media and the cost to copy. Nobody was using it, so why waste the money? True...
But technology keeps advancing and what was $10,000 in 1990 is now $.10...
2. Ability to access the data in it's native format. All that takes is either a lossless conversion program (to convert to the current format) or a reproduction program.
Data conversion programs are easy to write and simple to run. And they can be easily passed along as PD programs and used by anybody. Think Calibre, or PKZIP, or WAV to MP3 or FLAC files. (I'm ignoring DRM, a completely different issue.)
If that is insufficient, emulators can be written to execute the data using old programs. I can run under Windows XP any version of MS-DOS, all the way back to DOS 1.0, Atari 400/800, Apple II software, 68000 Mac software, AMIGA OS, Atari ST DOS, TRS-DOS, CP-M, MP-M, (and on and on). If the application software is not hardware dependent, (unless a replacement driver emulator has been written), I can run any non-DRM software for any emulator I run. (Free programs from ANTIC magazine, anyone?)
Millions of dollars? No. Virtually all free. (The Virtual PC 2004 cost $100, it's what will run any DOS back to 1.0)
But
YOU must do the archiving. Nobody else is going to do it for you for certain. (Maybe common stuff, but really obscure stuff, you protect.)