“Another challenge in conventional storage media is their unsuitability for long-term storage, with optical discs, solid-state drives, and hard-disk drives having lifespans of 25 years, 12 years, and 10 years, respectively […] Moreover, the stability of DNA was proved by the successful recovery of ancient DNA under burial conditions. The studies have shown that preservation of DNA does not require additional energy for data storage.“ [1]
No, DNA is terrible. Microsoft's Project Silica seems to be the contender for indefinite, maintenance free, storage. But, there's the whole "It's Glass" issue.
Yes, you can chuck your SSD into a freezer. Data retention time increases exponentially in lower temperatures, so keeping it in a regular +4C fridge is enough to extend retention by decades.
Just remember to heat up the disk before writing and after storage.
If my three year old 350€ fridge has a no frost option that never failed or had hiccups in all that time, I assume the industrial one bought to store drives in that hypothetical situation would do to.
There are multiple problems. Storing stems or a rendered mix can be fully durable with some care to replicate it sufficiently. But what of for instance the session files, which are likely tied to custom hardware which eventually becomes scarce.
Object storage is a fine proposition for long term retention but it does nothing for the organizational problem that someone needs to continuously pay the bill and ensure the provider didn't lose anything, and that can easily get lost in M&A, estate liquidation, etc.
The bottom line is, if something is worth saving, you need someone to take on the role of archivist that will balance the technical and economic changes that go with preservation. There is nothing passive about it unless hope is the strategy.
There are high density binary microfilm optical formats on archival grade film stock that should be stable for several hundred years. Although tbh I'm an M-DISC guy.
Object storage in the cloud is likely to succeed there, but then cost and security issues arise.
If data are encrypted, then managing keys is another pain/cost dimension.
At the several decade point, keeping copies at multiple vendors becomes a discussion point, since even Google and Amazon are not likely to be immortal, and that Ukrainian data center might experience physical security challenges.
The reader is an ordinary DVD or Bluray drive. It's safe to assume these will continue to be manufactured for 20 more years and if they have solid state components, a shelf life of 100 years afterwards.
It doesn't seem very reasonable to draw conclusions about longevity from any comparison of a rather complex machine like a Betamax deck (that cost a huge amount of money to buy) to something rather simple like a modern Blu-Ray drive ($100, ish).
It seems much more reasonable to assume that Blu-Ray hardware will continue to be produced until something else (what?) actually supplants it for cold, off-line data storage.
(Also, too: The compact cassette is dead as fuck and has been for decades, even with the niche resurgence in recent years. Yet new machines are still being produced, and so is new tape stock. The format is 61 years old.)
You have a point, but considering Betamax tapes only stopped production in 2016, (the recorders in 2002) and the proliferation of dvd / Blu-ray, etc is much higher I think 20 years is safe. 30 however…
But is there any format you can promise every part of it will be in production in 20 years ?
Amazon still lists some refurbished vhs players but…
“Another challenge in conventional storage media is their unsuitability for long-term storage, with optical discs, solid-state drives, and hard-disk drives having lifespans of 25 years, 12 years, and 10 years, respectively […] Moreover, the stability of DNA was proved by the successful recovery of ancient DNA under burial conditions. The studies have shown that preservation of DNA does not require additional energy for data storage.“ [1]
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-58386-z
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13534-024-00386-z