5 ms·
Terrible example, digital media can last far longer, under the same circumstances. Have a USB drive Hard Drive, or USB? Plug them in 10 to 15 years later, chan
by sorwin 4y ago
Terrible example, digital media can last far longer, under the same circumstances.
Have a USB drive Hard Drive, or USB? Plug them in 10 to 15 years later, chances are, they will have far less damage than a book in all those years.
It's an unfair comparison.
- TuringNYC 4y agoI have some books on CD-ROM. They have no damage, true...but good luck finding a computer with a CD-ROM drive now.
- kipchak 4y agoCDs are also at risk of disc rot, which might be a non issue for hundreds of years or fail within 20 depending on the CD and storage. From a Library of congress study: "The mean lifetime for the disc population as a whole was calculated to be 776 years for the discs used in this study. As demonstrated in the histograms in Figures 18 and 19, that lifetime could be less than 25 years for some discs, up to 500 years for others, and even longer." https://cdm.link/2017/02/a-generation-of-cds-is-already-rotting-and-dying/ https://cdm.link/2017/02/a-generation-of-cds-is-already-rott...
- krmboya 4y ago- Assuming the hardware does not change - Assuming the software does not change - Assuming the usb device is stored securely and lightly used. Bit rot is real
- obsrvatlarge 4y agoNeed to store virtual machines with both the operating system and the reader/converter software included. There are lots of bits that can rot...
- sorwin 4y agoNo, you don't lol. You do realize both the algorithm to decompress the media, and the media as well can be stored alongside, right? Including. any instructions to actually use that media.
- obsrvatlarge 4y agoSure, but rewriting software in order to access books is a lot of extra work. I just store the VM containing the necessary tools and make sure it still executes in the new HW+os when they are upgraded.
- anthk 4y agoFormats change. Could you use some disk image formats from old Mac emulators made for the Amiga?
- sorwin 4y agoAssuming the book is kept under good conditions, in a humid controller room, with nobody touching it? Your point is moot. there's a reason we moved to digital media, and why nobody keeps paper copies of everything, aside for last-resort scenarios (which once again includes physical media that nobody ever touches)
- anthk 4y agoYour books will be readable in 20 years. Not so with a USB drive.
- Tepix 4y agoIf USB sticks are as unreliable as some SD cards, chances are they break after a few years, too.
- iggldiggl 4y agoI have a game that was distributed via an USB stick, and on the rare occasion that I had to reinstall that game, I've always needed to restore a backup copy back onto the USB stick, because the files on the stick themselves were damaged (the USB stick itself is required as some sort of copy protection dongle for the installer).