Computerworld looks at the media on which information is stored and the software that stores it present problems. As digital tapes and optical discs pile higher and higher in the cavernous rooms of off-site archive providers, businesses are finding them increasingly expensive to maintain.
The software that created the data has limited backward compatibility, so newer versions of a program may not be able to read data stored under older versions.
Moreover, the media on which the data is stored degrade relatively quickly.
Nickel disk and an ion laser to the rescue.
There is a company called Norsam that is able to burn analog images onto a nickel disk for long term preservation. Last thousands of years.
Norsam’s patented HD-ROSETTA archival preservation process records microfilm-like images (analog images) onto a metal disc.
Benefits of HD-ROSETTA Metal Discs
*Few environmental controls compared to microfilm.
*Immune to technology obsolescence.
*Higher temperature tolerance.
*Immune to water damage.
*Unaffected by electromagnetic radiation.
*Metal is more durable and lasts longer than microfilm.
Here is an abstract written by the Los Alamos labs on a test of the disk.
Abstract
The HD-Rosetta data storage disc exhibited good degradation resistance in elevated temperature air and a low corrosion rate in several aqueous environments. The disc examined, which contained thousands of pages of analog data in the form of microscopic images and text, was composed of a thin layer of nickel on a silicon substrate. The text was formed from a master during deposition of the nickel layer. Elevated temperature air was used to simulate fire conditions, and aqueous corrosion testing simulated several scenarios that could occur with a loss of the controlled storage environment. For temperatures up to 300 oC (570 oF) and times up to 65 h in laboratory air, the text remained readable. Exposures to saltwater, tap water, and a simulated marine air environment for 15 weeks did not affect readability of the text. The corrosion rate was measured as a function of time for seven days and was approximately 1 mm per year, which suggested that the disc could survive a long time in the saltwater if the environmental conditions remained the same. However, these results cannot be extrapolated to very long times because chemical changes in the environment that may take place with time were not taken into account.
The Norsam disk are mentioned in the book The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility: The Ideas Behind the World’s Slowest Computer