LOST DATA
BBC NEWS | Technology | Warning of data ticking time bomb: "Research by the British Library suggests Europe loses 3bn euros each year in business value because of issues around digital preservation.
The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.
Ms Ceeney said: 'If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.
'If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it.'
'Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper,' warned Ms Ceeney.
She added: 'The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.
Historically within the IT industry the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats
Gordon Frazer, Microsoft
'We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper.'"
Today the answer is in virtual machines running on modern servers
The National Archives, which holds 900 years of written material, has more than 580 terabytes of data - the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopaedias - in older file formats that are no longer commercially available.
Ms Ceeney said: 'If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years.
'If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago, you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it.'
'Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper,' warned Ms Ceeney.
She added: 'The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation.
Historically within the IT industry the prevailing trend was for proprietary file formats
Gordon Frazer, Microsoft
'We cannot afford to let digital assets being created today disappear. We need to make information created in the digital age to be as resilient as paper.'"
Today the answer is in virtual machines running on modern servers
posted by Hugh W at 9:13 pm
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