Are you prepared for data rot?
March 12, 2009
Still hanging on to your dusty old tape collection? If you haven’t digitized your cassettes yet, you might want to get started. CBS News contributor David Pogue wrote an interesting piece on data rot, which is what happens when you have information that’s either too decayed to use, or relies on technology that no longer exists.
If you’ve moved all your important data to the digital realm, don’t act all smug just yet. Digital media isn’t the indestructible storage option we thought it was. Today we have more ways to store information than ever before — and that’s not always a good thing. According to Pogue, new formats pop up faster than ever, which means they also go obsolete much more quickly. What good is a digital document if no one makes the software that reads it anymore? This means we have to choose carefully how we save our important files, and remember to update them to newer formats (that is, once every few years, for the rest of your life).
Even fairly stable formats like TIFF files can fall victim to the relatively frail storage objects that house them. Pogue quotes Dag Spicer, senior curator at the Computer History Museum, who said:
“A hard drive lasts about five years…The low range of CDs’ and DVDs’ longevity is five years. So the basic lesson is: Look after your own data and make sure that you take steps to keep it moving onto new formats about once every ten years.”
Where to begin? Your school’s collection of VHS tapes of science experiments and school plays might be a good place to start. Pogue tells the sad tale of filmmaker Lydia Robertson, who has never even seen a film she made in high school because the machines that play it aren’t around anymore. I too made a movie in high school, shot on VHS tape. How long until data rot claims the VCR? In the case of my film, not soon enough. For everyone else, it’s probably time to convert those videos to Quicktime. -BILL FERRIS
Bye, Tech: Dealing With Data Rot via CBS News
Related stuff:
Digitize! Bring Back Those Cassettes
Box your important files online
Send really big files over the Internet
Get 1GB of storage for free with OpenDrive
Photo credit: pollas on Flickr.
I get asked one million times a day how people can write a better report. I tell them all the same thing: nothing helps a report better than a good, solid number.
Good evening. Right now, I’m writing to you from my apartment at an undisclosed location in Carrboro, North Carolina. I won’t tell you where I am exactly, but how would you imagine the place? Do you picture half-empties strewn about, a Scarface poster, Twizzlers, a bowl of cereal left in the bathtub, an untouched copy of Ulysses, a fridge stocked with any possible drink that women may want? (You’ll need to search YouTube for that last one on your own.) That is so far off the mark, I’m a bit insulted. I don’t own a Scarface poster.
Back up your files already. Seriously, right now. In the information age, a hard drive crash can affect your life as much as a house fire (except for, you know, the possibility of being burned alive. All right, it’s really not that much like a house fire — a car theft, perhaps…). Think about it — your music collection, vacation photos, your screenplay that you’ve been meaning to finish someday — all of it is vulnerable to the whims of a fragile construct of plastic and metal.
I’m sure you’ve heard the results of various Gallup polls throughout this election season. Rather than waiting for the nightly newscast to mention what the pollsters say, you can keep track yourself by going straight to the source. 
For centuries, structures made from 
When I was a lad, I hated when math story problems used metric units. Sure, the rest of the world is able to adequately measure stuff despite using the metric system, but I prefer good old American units like inches, pounds, or Fahrenheit. Like Grampa Simpson said, “The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!”
When I got my first computer before going to college, it amazed me with its massive 366MB of memory. How would I ever use all of it? That computer cost nearly $2000.
Whether doing a story problem in math class or calculating square footage of a house, I’ve never been good at visualizing measurements. Three hundred square feet could be an apartment or a shoe box for all I know.
Are you looking for a new look for your data? Are you tired of the same old boring bar graph? Do you wonder if you have the right visual for the occasion? Will a line graph tell the story, or would a Venn diagram do a better job?
