Punched cards, stored in a sealed dry box, and perhaps irradiated to
kill off any bacteria, should long outlive any magnetic or capacitive
storage medium. If it is difficult to find a working card reader, they
could always be read by eye, though that might be tedious. Their EBCDIC
code is not ASCII, but at least it is well documented.
George
On 12/12/2012 11:35 PM, Artem Evdokimov wrote:
Given that it's basically a solid state tiny capacitor, temperature
should indeed be a huge factor :) I am actually considering storing
some flash sticks in a freezer, to see what happens. And in LN2 as well...
Artem
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 4:14 PM, Richard Gillilan <r...@cornell.edu
<mailto:r...@cornell.edu>> wrote:
I don't think memory sticks have any internal electrolytics or
power supplies. Both USB and FAT32 are widely documented standards
in this era, so while they might no longer be supported (FAT32 is
already very old), information on how to communicate and decode
data will still likely be available. RS232, for example, is now 50
years old and one can still find adapters and software.
Richard
On Dec 12, 2012, at 4:45 PM, Roger Rowlett wrote:
Maybe the memory chips will retain their bits for 100 years, but
what about the driver hardware or internal power supply? Anyone
had an electrolytic capacitor last for 100 years? Just sayin...
I like the image of the USB sticks in the -80 freezer, though. :)
_______________________________________
Roger S. Rowlett
Gordon & Dorothy Kline Professor
Department of Chemistry
Colgate University
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
tel: (315)-228-7245 <tel:%28315%29-228-7245>
ofc: (315)-228-7395 <tel:%28315%29-228-7395>
fax: (315)-228-7935 <tel:%28315%29-228-7935>
email: rrowl...@colgate.edu <mailto:rrowl...@colgate.edu>
On 12/12/2012 4:38 PM, Artem Evdokimov wrote:
Or... (gasp) store a regular USB drive in a freezer, yes? If the
relationship between data decay rate and temperature indeed
follows the same good old Arrhenius formula then any old USB
drive is virtually endless at -80C and safe for human life span
at -20 (i.e. kitchen freezer, sans defrost cycles (so pack your
USB in some ice packs so defrost doesn't kill it).
If this works, feel free to send me money, SanDisk...
Artem
On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Richard Gillilan
<r...@cornell.edu <mailto:r...@cornell.edu>> wrote:
SanDisk advertises a "Memory Vault" disk for archival
storage of photos that they claim will last 100 years.
(note: they do have a scheme for estimating lifetime of the
memory, Arrhenius Equation ... interesting. Check it out:
www.sandisk.com/products/usb/memory-vault/
<http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/memory-vault/> and
click the Chronolock tab.).
Has anyone here looked into this or seen similar products?
Richard Gillilan
MacCHESS
--
Prof. George M. Sheldrick FRS
Dept. Structural Chemistry,
University of Goettingen,
Tammannstr. 4,
D37077 Goettingen, Germany
Tel. +49-551-39-3021 or -3068
Fax. +49-551-39-22582
