Archiving

Backups

Jan 1, 2022 Archiving Lifecycle Media Storage

Like flossing, backups are something we should do all the time, but for many it is often overlooked for spans of time. Partly because it is a lot of work. Partly because it has been a moving target over time. Backups The basic idea is to take a snapshot of either your whole system or the parts that are important to you …

Bits for life

Oct 17, 2021 Archiving Storage

How long can a bit live? This question is both nonsensical and serious at the same time. The base concept of a bit says it doesn’t have a life time so much as it encodes a hint at the probability distribution. In real life though we use those bits to encode almost everything today. Looking around my house I can …

Archive format

Oct 31, 2020 Archiving File-format

This isn’t a new problem. If you are going to archive something successfully you need a format that will be accessible for years to come. This is a fundamental concept of anticryptography. It goes way back also. The library of Alexandria was an immense effort that was made possible by a simple format, ink on …

Carving in stone

Oct 18, 2020 archiving media

I originally posted a version of this in the summer of 2016. I’m reposting it with some minor edits. A classic way to make something permanent is to carve it in stone. So much so we hold it in our language with phrases like “It isn’t written in stone yet.” Using a chisel and hammer the shapes …

Code is data

Oct 16, 2020 Programming Archiving

It used to run… I have seen a number of reports in the media about the aging of source code recently and it has had me thinking. If you can’t run code, whatever relies on it’s execution dies with the code. Sure there is always the option of rewriting the code in a more modern language, but that …