[inforoots] "The digital Dark Age" (Sydney Morning Herald)

[Texx]

I always thought the digital dark age was the founding of Micro$oft 
(maniacal laughter)

Now really, archiving is a pain to do properly.

Our own musuem collection contains boxes of mag tape that we havent been able 
to read yet.  Alas Im sure some of it has succumed to bit rit.

Back in the mid 90s when I was with SGI 
(and actually worked in the building that later became CHM)
we had a data problem of our own.

The firestation at Crittendon hadnt been built yet and Mountain View fire 
warned the whole area that in case of quake, no emergency vehicle would cross 
the 101 overpasses untill they had been recertified.

This presented a problem.  All businesses would likely be on their own for a 
few days after a major catastrophe such as a quake.
Later the k-barrier in 101 was diamonsawed and removable panels installed in 
the fence to allow ems vehicles to cross without using the bridges but they 
would need a traffic stop done 1st.

OK, so SGI installed several of the large cargo shipping boxes around the campus.
A small army of us were trained as emergency responders.
All hams in the company were automatically drafted into the ert team.
This took care of lifesafety as far as we could, but what to do about DATA ?!?!?

So we formed a data emergency response team (basically business continuity)
and being a data center admin, I was on it as well.
We looked at several ideas including another "ark" with replacement servers
and cd backups in it.

Being a bit of a wag, I got them to 1st let me install a humidigraph & 
thermograph in one of the existing arks.
The temperature extremes were more than expected.
We dertermined that spare servers would not reliably survive the extremes.

So I started stashing test backups in the various arks, only to discover that 
in extreme environments, I was lucky to make a cd last even 6 months.

As it turns out, the most resilient and longlived archiving media is:
(GET THIS and cue the drum roll please)

PUNCHED MYLAR TAPE.  It outlasts everything else.

Funny how old technology seems to outlast the new fangles stuff, isnt it?