Lars Noodén via Dng said on Tue, 17 Aug 2021 12:15:45 +0300

>On 8/17/21 10:39 AM, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:
>[snip]
>> I've lost all my earier works on amiga and plus4 due to bitrotting -
>> I sold the hardware when I realised everyting on floppy dodn't even
>> last some years.
>
>The life span of various storage media under various storage conditions
>was (and is) well-documented but widely ignored. As a student and,
>later, researcher in libraries and archives in the 1990s 'we' tried
>hard to inform people of what the dangers were and of viable
>preservation strategies. Now as then ways out mostly center around
>migration from one storage medium to another. Filesystems that detect
>flipped or lost bits, like OpenZFS or BtrFS, help a little there.

My technique has been this:

Hard drives in the $400.00 range grow exponentially in space, so I can
keep everything. I back up at reasonable intervals. So my stuff stays
on my hard disk until it's time to buy a new computer, and then
transfer to the new disk is just an rsync away.

I have no evidence that I've ever had bit rot. My main reason for
backups is user error, and the very rare hard disk failure.

After reading your message, I'll be investigating OpenZFS to add to my
data preservation arsenal. But I still say, for those things that must
last 50 years without continual attention, paper is the hot tip.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques