The 100-Year Archive Dilemma

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.