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It will be interesting to see the durability of print vs digital content of time. Many web properties are no longer accessible due to M&A activity and Small/so

It will be interesting to see the durability of print vs digital content of time. Many web properties are no longer accessible due to M&A activity and Small/solo publishers unable or unwilling to maintain their assets. Archives like WayBack Machine mitigates some of the loss of digital content so long as the archives themselves are still maintained. Will spinning rust be as durable as Microfiche?

jamesfinlayson 2y ago
> Will spinning rust be as durable as Microfiche? Not sure how long microfiche lasts for but someone posted a link here not too long ago about how record companies had embraced magnetic hard drives in the 1990s to store music masters and are starting to find that the drives are no longer readable.
- kevindamm 2y ago
  It depends a lot on the humidity and heat or light in the environment where the microfiche are being stored. But they should be able to retain their data for 500 or so years. CDs and Laserdiscs are also seeing bitrot. The layer of material that is etched does degrade over time. Error correction helps some, but if it's a writable CD or DVD it's only likely to last a decade or two. M-Drives are CDs that are designed to retain their data for about 1000 years and can be writable by specific consumer drives. Not sure how long the professionally pressed CDs last but it's not that long.
  - sgc 2y ago
    Googling from your comment led to M-Discs, which are available in dvd or blu ray, up to 100gb discs. That looks extremely useful.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - kevindamm 2y ago
      ah, thanks for catching the typo, it was getting late for me, I should have pulled up a link or something because I haven't worked with these discs in a decade or so.. yeah those are the ones I'm referring to -- if you're archiving something like family history or data that needs to be good for centuries (without having to re-copy and juggle), those are a better choice than just about anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
      - tom_wilde 2y ago
        What beats M-Disc? Genuinely curious just having bought one.
        kevindamm 2y ago
        Nothing comes to mind that you can interface with a computer, but when I wrote the phrase I was thinking of projects on the scale of Long Now [0], requiring physical etching on materials and very careful storage. Alternatively, tell people that they can't store something and you're likely to find it robustly mirrored by many. [0] https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/ https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/
        tom_wilde 2y ago
        Well that was a fascinating diversion. This is bonkers! https://norsam.com/products/buddhist-nano-film/ https://norsam.com/products/buddhist-nano-film/
rhplus 2y ago
We can all help in a small way. Archive.org is a non-profit and always needs financial support. https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate
ghaff 2y ago
As photography was largely switching to digital, I sometimes wondered whether--whatever the preservation possibilities that digital offered--to what degree photos would really be preserved in practice relative to prints and slides.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Most photos are terrible. Colors can start fading in at little as 10 years if they were hanging on your wall that long. B&W can last longer, but still will fade. Of course there are different process, if you use the best process photos will last longer, but still they are not very stable. Digital makes it cheap and easy to have multiple in many locations. While any one media may fail, you still have a copy - I have on this computer all the data from whatever computer I was using 15 years ago. (most of it I have not looked at in 20 years and I could safely delete, but it is still here, and on other backup systems I have)
  - ghaff 2y ago
    My point was there's the capability to do all this backup preservation but it doesn't just happen. And it's less visible in many cases than the proverbial shoebox full of photos will be.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      What is the difference between photos on a crashed harddrive, and photos in a shoebox that that just burned in a house fire? Photos are vulnerable to many different attacks just like digital data. These days your photos are probably backed up by facebook, google, or are such major players. (there are a lot of privacy concerns with the above, but they do tend to have good backups)
      - ghaff 2y ago
        There is a lot of serendipitous backing up with social media. There was also a lot of serendipitous passing on to relatives of physical media. Not sure which better stands the test of time. (And I'm sure it varies.)

jamesfinlayson 2y ago

> Will spinning rust be as durable as Microfiche? Not sure how long microfiche lasts for but someone posted a link here not too long ago about how record companies had embraced magnetic hard drives in the 1990s to store music masters and are starting to find that the drives are no longer readable.

kevindamm 2y ago
It depends a lot on the humidity and heat or light in the environment where the microfiche are being stored. But they should be able to retain their data for 500 or so years. CDs and Laserdiscs are also seeing bitrot. The layer of material that is etched does degrade over time. Error correction helps some, but if it's a writable CD or DVD it's only likely to last a decade or two. M-Drives are CDs that are designed to retain their data for about 1000 years and can be writable by specific consumer drives. Not sure how long the professionally pressed CDs last but it's not that long.
- sgc 2y ago
  Googling from your comment led to M-Discs, which are available in dvd or blu ray, up to 100gb discs. That looks extremely useful.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    ah, thanks for catching the typo, it was getting late for me, I should have pulled up a link or something because I haven't worked with these discs in a decade or so.. yeah those are the ones I'm referring to -- if you're archiving something like family history or data that needs to be good for centuries (without having to re-copy and juggle), those are a better choice than just about anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC
    - tom_wilde 2y ago
      What beats M-Disc? Genuinely curious just having bought one.
      - kevindamm 2y ago
        Nothing comes to mind that you can interface with a computer, but when I wrote the phrase I was thinking of projects on the scale of Long Now [0], requiring physical etching on materials and very careful storage. Alternatively, tell people that they can't store something and you're likely to find it robustly mirrored by many. [0] https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/ https://longnow.org/ideas/very-long-term-backup/
        tom_wilde 2y ago
        Well that was a fascinating diversion. This is bonkers! https://norsam.com/products/buddhist-nano-film/ https://norsam.com/products/buddhist-nano-film/

rhplus 2y ago

We can all help in a small way. Archive.org is a non-profit and always needs financial support. https://archive.org/donate https://archive.org/donate

ghaff 2y ago

As photography was largely switching to digital, I sometimes wondered whether--whatever the preservation possibilities that digital offered--to what degree photos would really be preserved in practice relative to prints and slides.

bluGill 2y ago
Most photos are terrible. Colors can start fading in at little as 10 years if they were hanging on your wall that long. B&W can last longer, but still will fade. Of course there are different process, if you use the best process photos will last longer, but still they are not very stable. Digital makes it cheap and easy to have multiple in many locations. While any one media may fail, you still have a copy - I have on this computer all the data from whatever computer I was using 15 years ago. (most of it I have not looked at in 20 years and I could safely delete, but it is still here, and on other backup systems I have)
- ghaff 2y ago
  My point was there's the capability to do all this backup preservation but it doesn't just happen. And it's less visible in many cases than the proverbial shoebox full of photos will be.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    What is the difference between photos on a crashed harddrive, and photos in a shoebox that that just burned in a house fire? Photos are vulnerable to many different attacks just like digital data. These days your photos are probably backed up by facebook, google, or are such major players. (there are a lot of privacy concerns with the above, but they do tend to have good backups)
    - ghaff 2y ago
      There is a lot of serendipitous backing up with social media. There was also a lot of serendipitous passing on to relatives of physical media. Not sure which better stands the test of time. (And I'm sure it varies.)