First job out of college, I worked as a oil data digital archivist, recovering data from old tapes. The data was geological shot data (seismic data collected by

First job out of college, I worked as a oil data digital archivist, recovering data from old tapes. The data was geological shot data (seismic data collected by blowing dynamite, ground thumping trucks and explosive gas ships). There are likely thousands of different combinations of hardware, data and formats that we could support. This was just from a 50 year period. I've no doubt that data rot is one of the hardest challenges for the future. If it's really important then you better put it on something physical that lasts.