What do cats and data storage have in common?
The issue of backward compatibility in storage is really haunting; it’s an issue we have dealt with, continue to deal with and will deal with. We need a long term storage and backup product that is easy to pay for, easy to use and easy to retrieve from. Not only do we have the issue of backward compatibility but also the issue of what medium? Online services can run as high as $200/month to store your data, and it’s safe to say as time goes on these prices will also rise… Some simple online storage options can also run as cheap as $130/year but max out at around 600GB of data storage. Then the price my friend goes up, big-time.
So I sit in the dark for the 2nd time in my life, transferring old DVD data to new DVD data. My cat watching me, his eyes bouncing back and forth, 30 more discs to go. The crazy thing is I know that what I do is in vain. CD’s and DVD’s have already proven the test of time, errr by time I mean around 10 years. Then Entropy takes over ( the 2nd law of thermodynamics) and you end up with several small fragile Frisbee’s that used to hold such items as birthday photos, baseball game videos, weddings, financial records, and all those illegal-but-for-some-reason-you-just-cant-get-rid-of Napster downloads from 1999. Even the CD’s you store in a Ziploc baggie after sucking all the air out then placing in a cool dark, temperature controlled hole will fade after around 15-20 years, so my online reading tells me… And the internet never lies.
Then the question becomes “How do I keep a terabyte of data for about five years, in a way that is possible and painless to transfer to another medium/storage solution just before the Grim Reaper of data takes my 1’s and 0’s to the grave?” So now I digress in my post here, we know it’s a problem, look around you, look at the icons on your desktop and the things they connect to; photos, videos, your life. Then think for a moment that 99.9% of all this information will not outlive the life of your housecat… And life is a coming and goings of cats.