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Funny that you mention that. Polyester film is widely used for long-term archival, precisely because it so stable.

• raverbashing 9y ago
  You're right, but analog signal degrades, and humidity can cause mould. Digital data tapes have a nice layer of error correction on top. Better than film, but still requires some care.
  • blattimwind 9y ago
    Digital storage needs sophisticated hard- and software to read, which thus needs to be archived as well (and how would you do that; no hardware has that shelf life), or, you re-archive everything every ~10-15 years (as is done today). In contrast, I can read anything from the Barbarastollen with a magnifying glass and sunlight, today and in 500 years.
  • justin66 9y ago
    > Better than film I bet in the very long term it's not. I suspect that error correction on digital tape is only meant to address the problem of magnetic spots flipping or fading over time, but the tapes are throwaways as soon as there's detectable physical degradation or disintegration. Contrast with analog tape (or to speak to your point, film) which can be handled in all kinds of crazy ways (cleaning, baking, coating, etc.) in order to get at least a partial or imperfect copy of the original made.