So, let me get this straight. The 8-inch floppies cant be read on modern  
computers, nor can the smaller floppies. All technology has shifted to CD  
readers, but most of us have become enamored at the cheap ten cent CDs and  copied 
books, photos, and charts on the cheapies that will degrade any time  between 
tonight and five years from now. Higher quality CDs with a touch of gold  will 
last longer, but we still need to completely change or re-scan everything  
every 5 years or so. And, there is zero guarantee our future hardware could read  
the CDs even if they survived. What about quality degrading from  rewriting?
 
Ironically, those photos printed with silver oxide chemicals on acid-free  
paper could last 100 years or more.
 
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc. 



Geoff brings up an important point that I touched on, but did not  
emphasize. As the technology changes it may render your files  
unreadable. The introduction of blue laser, will result in anything  
using an earlier laser as unreadable. It is for this reason that  
folks who really care about digital archives store them on hard disk  
and back them up/recopy them periodically. In addition every time a  
new OS, or other major change to the software comes out you've got to  
do it all over again. There is a window during which things are  
backward compatible, but after that you may even find that your old  
hard drives are unreadable.

On Apr 27, 2006, at 3:54, geoff carver wrote:

> overall, i get the feeling that, with careful storage, your media  
> is going to outlive your software
> so you're going to have to set up long-term maintenance programs  
> for any archive: copy & convert with every software/media update
> just like we got everything off those big ugly floppy disks and  
> moved them to smaller disks, then cds, we're eventually have to  
> switch to blue laser disks
> also surprised none of our british friends have mentioned the AHDS,  
> the Arts & Humanities Data Service & their various guides to "good  
> practice" on digital archives
> check 'em out at:
> http://www.ahds.ac.uk/

James Brothers, RPA
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