What's the best media for long-term storage?<article>
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Reader Karen Bauer ponders a question of longevity. She writes:</p>
I enjoyed your article about maintaining media throughout the ages but I’d like to know something more. What is the best physical media to store archives on?
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If we allow history to be our guide, I’d suggest stone tablets—able to withstand just about any natural catastrophe you throw at them, but murder when it comes to editing.</p><p>
Silliness aside, there is a small lesson here. For certain kinds of media it’s helpful to have them in the most readable form possible. Printing text and images eliminates the translation issue—where a format has gone the way of the dodo and you don’t have the technology to read it. But this kind of storage is then subject to degradation from the elements—one good flood and your media is soggy toast. Plus, putting it in a purely physical form may require a lot of physical space to store it.</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/2875114/whats-the-best-media-for-long-term-storage.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
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What's the best media for long-term storage?
