The Lifespan of Storage Media

THE LIFESPAN OF STORAGE MEDIA FOR AS LONG WE HAVE BEEN INVENTING WAYS TO CAPTURE AND PRESENT DATA, we have been developing media on which to store it. With each new innovation, we've seen greater convenience, increased storage capacity, and longer lifespans. But at some point, even with the utmost care, media fails... leaving us with a useless piece of plastic, tape, or metal. The Cloud, with its extensive network of server farms, leverages redundant storage media, ensuring that in the event of hardware failure, the data lives on, stored safely in another part of the cloud. By way of comparison, we've assembled some lifespan statistics for storage media throughout the digital ages. FAST REDUNDANT RELIABLE CD ACCESSIBLE ANYVWHERE FOREVER 25 50 75 100+ THE CLOUD COMPUTER MEDIA YEARS OF USE REGULAR USE UNUSED OR EXTREME CARE ZIP DISK 2 10 1994 CLICK OF DEATH When ZIP disks would become corrupted they would endlessly click. That signified that the disk was no longer usable and all data is lost. 5" FLOPPY 11 1976 30 DISK 1982 3.5" FLOPPY? 15 DISK CD-RW! 3 100 1997 1987 00 DIGITAL ТАРЕ LOST IN SPACE 10 30 USB drives are often lost long before they ever fail. USB FLASH 2000 10 75 DRIVE DVD-R 1999 30 100 HEAD CRASH HARD 14 DRIVE 34 1956 100 When the reader arm slides into the disk cylinder and crashes the drive. SOLID STATE 51 100+ 1999 HARD DRIVE AUDIO MEDIA COMPACT 3 100 1982 DISC REEL AUDIO ТАРЕ 1930's 10 20 CASSETTE 12 1965 ТАРЕ 10 20 COMPATIBILITY 8-Tracks became an odd EIGHT TRACK format when players became very rare. DJ SCRATCH N SNIFF 1964 10 30 Hip-Hop proteges cut their teeth and their vinyl destroying records in the f learning how to DJ. MINI DISC16 15 50 1992 name VINYL RECORD 1881- 100 19017 VIDEO MEDIA BE KIND REWIND VHS tapes would often tear or break due to 1971 CO VHS TAPE? 5 15 excessive rewinding. VIDEO "HITS" Decaying digital tapes will "hit" or display bad pixels during playback. 1995 DV TAPE 10 20 DVD! 30 100 1995 SUPER 8 17 1965 70 100 FILM PHOTO MEDIA UNDEVELOPED 1885 FILM 10 3 6 COLOR FADES B&W Photos will DIGITAL 19 РHOTOS last longer than color. The dyes in colors are less stable. 1990's 30 50 PHOTO 20 SLIDES 50 70 1941 GRANDMASTER FLASH DEVELOPED 20 PHOTOS Solid state memory decays as it is used and not from time. 50 78 1900's МЕMORY 18 CARD 115 1999 25 50 75 100+ ADDITIONAL WAYS MEDIA CAN FAIL COMPATIBILITY ISSUES OXIDATION /CHEMICAL BREAKDOWN DEMAGNETISM DRY OUT PHYSICAL DAMAGE A HTTP://CRASHPLAN.COM/MEDIALIFESPAN SOURCES: 1 archive.gov, osta.org, 2 videotransferboston.com/shelf-life-of-video-tape/ www.audiokarma.org 3 http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub54/4life_expectancy.html 4 www.dcresource.com 5,6,7,8,9 webdev.ccac.edu/talkin/Storage_Quick_Reference.pdf http://webdev.ccac.edu/talkin/storage.htm, http://webdev.ccac.edu/talkin/storage.htm 12 http://www.musicstack.com/articles/can-vinyl-last-forever-tips-oncarevinyl-records 13 engineering.dartmouth.edu/microeng/processing//NR93000PY.pdf 14 http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n12/205_Floppy_disk_handling_and_php 15 www.audiokarma.org 16 http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html 17 The Western Digital MTBF specification is 300,000 hours. 18 http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?1619-Reel-to-Reel-Tape-Lifespan 19 http://forums.sonyinsider.com/topic/23903-minidisc-lifespan/ 20 http://www.bonofilm.com/super8reality.asp 21 http://www.whatdigitakamera.com/equipment/advice/517064/understanding-memory-cards.html 22 http://printers.toptenreviews.com/photo-only/how-to-make-your-photos-last-longer.htm 23,24 http://www.caps-project.org/cache/DigitalMedialifeExpectancyAndCare.html CRASHPLAN InfoNewt ©2012 CODE 42 SOFTWARE, INC., ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Automatic Online Backup