FYI
 

Opinions vary on how to preserve data on digital storage media, such as optical CDs and DVDs. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM Deutschland, has his own view: If you want to avoid having to burn new CDs every few years, use magnetic tapes to store all your pictures, videos and songs for a lifetime.


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http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/2006...pcworld/124312

Interesting point of view, but I'd like to offer a counterpoint that was a hard lesson for me a while back. Magnetic tapes are also used for professional studio recording. They degrade with time. Without going into all the physics, data can shift on them as well; and any type of tape is prone to failure if it is not run from front to back on a periodic basis.

Spooled magnetic tape (even the high quality, $60 tapes we used in the studio) can have a tendency to start sticking together if it sits for long enough. Then, when you go to retrieve the data (in this example the individual audio tracks on the tape), if any sections of tape are stuck together on the spool they can be damaged when they're pulled apart as the tape runs.

Thus, when I went back into the studio to play with some tracks that hadn't been touched in about 4 years I found that certain tracks were unrecoverable, even with pro level error correction trying to fill in the missing data from the damaged sections of tape. Even microscopic damage can create problems, and these were tapes stored in a temperature and humidity controlled environment.

Magnetic tape is a great storage medium as the article states, but in order to get a 30 year lifespan out of it you need to make sure the tape doesn't have the opportunity to fall victim to the scenario above, by at least running the tape front to back (even in seek/FF/RW) every 6-12 months :)

Great post, and welcome to the forums |thumb

Just to add...
I used to have high end audio equipment. This was before cd's were used. I played an album once and recorded it on a very nice Tandberg Open Reel Tape Deck. The Tapes were about $75/each. One summer in a warm place made all of them jelly :)

This is exactly why I don't bother backing up anything. You just can't win.
|drunk|

Yeah, that works great as long as your server never goes down |couch|

If I recall, when Boston's Third Stage was released, Amanda which had been recorded 4-5 years earlier was recorded on tape, and the only master they had stuck together when they tried to play it. A sound engineer with patience and talcum eventually was able to separate the tape inch by inch so that they could put the album together.

I store on CDs/DVDs and Hard drives, but, I question whether my data's value would exceed the longevity of the media.

Hey now! I was hosted on servers that went tits-up only twice last year. :D

albums still "sound" better than cd's.

:D