You’re right, the format’s integrity is only as good as the medium upon which it’s stored. Hard disks are really only good for a few decades if left untouched. Punchcards maybe a few thousand years if sealed up well.
The “active aspect” you mentioned is the key. There are file storage systems which employ regenerative error correction to achieve exactly this sort of desired outcome. I use one on my home server called ZFS. It was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and works great. The only catch is that there is a limit to the number of drives in your storage array which can fail before data becomes unrecoverable. So, you have to be constantly vigilant, and if a drive is starting to go, replace it before a potential worst case scenario of cascade failure.
Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way we could store something indefinitely without this kind of active monitoring and occasional TLC. If a sort of caretaker is required, this might be a good job for AI with real world robotic hooks - have it monitor the array and fabricate replacement drives for installation as needed.
One other possibility that just occurred to me is to encode it into living DNA along with better error correction mechanisms so it doesn’t mutate. Like thinking from a “leave data for future civilizations to find” perspective, though it could also be a decent long term passive(ish) archival. Maybe completely passive if a self-sustaining but isolated environment could be created for it.
Not great for data you want to keep but also actively use, though. Or data you want to be able to modify.
![[xkcd 1683] Digital Data](https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/6b5b434e-7bdc-4025-b04d-21e700d25079.webp){kind=link}
You’re right, the format’s integrity is only as good as the medium upon which it’s stored. Hard disks are really only good for a few decades if left untouched. Punchcards maybe a few thousand years if sealed up well.
The “active aspect” you mentioned is the key. There are file storage systems which employ regenerative error correction to achieve exactly this sort of desired outcome. I use one on my home server called ZFS. It was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and works great. The only catch is that there is a limit to the number of drives in your storage array which can fail before data becomes unrecoverable. So, you have to be constantly vigilant, and if a drive is starting to go, replace it before a potential worst case scenario of cascade failure.
Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way we could store something indefinitely without this kind of active monitoring and occasional TLC. If a sort of caretaker is required, this might be a good job for AI with real world robotic hooks - have it monitor the array and fabricate replacement drives for installation as needed.
One other possibility that just occurred to me is to encode it into living DNA along with better error correction mechanisms so it doesn’t mutate. Like thinking from a “leave data for future civilizations to find” perspective, though it could also be a decent long term passive(ish) archival. Maybe completely passive if a self-sustaining but isolated environment could be created for it.
Not great for data you want to keep but also actively use, though. Or data you want to be able to modify.