How long is long-term storage?

There is a big disconnect between how long people think they should be storing data and how long they actual can. One group of vendors and academics is trying to change that.

Two years ago, the Storage Networking Industry Association's Data Management Forum reported the results of a landmark study that looked at the state of long-term storage, i.e. preserving a digital object for more than 10 years. Some disturbing results jumped out.

The study suggested that we live in a digital version of the Dark Ages. I'm talking about it now because I think the messages from the study are still very relevant to both IT administrators and consumers.

A whopping 80 percent of the 276 organizations included in the study reported a need to retain electronic records for more than 50 years, so let's start there. How many of you storage administrators out there actually think you can do 50 years of electronic records retention given current technology? Without data loss? OK, so you won't be doing the same job 50 years from now, so why care? Next question: How many of you think that you can do more than three migrations of archival data from one storage media to the next without data loss? According to the study, the answer was very few of you.

Here's one for consumers: How many of you using Internet photo services sites think that your digitized images will still be there 50 years from now? You haven't thought about that, right? You and your spouse take pictures of the newborn today, you store them online, and maybe you store them at home, too. Here's a suggestion: make sure to print them and preserve the prints for as long as you can because if the enterprise-level storage administrators who have been doing digital storage for decades have little confidence in their ability to do long-term digital preservation, you shouldn't have much confidence either.

To Continue Reading: Click Here
----------------------------------------------------
Source: news.cnet.com
By: John Webster