Backukp

This is a long running problem in the industry as a whole.

I removed the draft copies of all my blog entries that I kept for no good reason in Google Docs  today.  I had not kept much in that long list of documents that was not on the blog. Most of those links are broken by now. Too many of the entries are just boring. I really need to figure out how to do long term storage.

Any media you use beyond a print out will not be viable in 10 years. CDs and DVDs will be phased out soon. Hard drives fail just sitting on a shelf. Thumb drives will not work in a couple years because the USB standard is changing. Someone needs to do a better job of making it work. Someone please come up with a standard that will at least stick around for a long time. I’m looking at 100 years. It has got to be doable.

A new story comes out every couple months about a company or government that lost a bunch of data due only to the fact that the media and devices that read that media are out of date. They can’t move it anywhere because the data is stuck on some media or data format that cannot be read. It is an ongoing problem. There has got to be a solution.

In my case, I’m planning on making a print out and sticking it in some kind of large Tupperware container. Sticking it in my attic and hoping for the best. That is about all I can do.

My stuff is not even worth anything except my own sentiment. My grandkids might stumble across it and give half a shit for three minutes. Most likely, it will get tossed without even being glanced at by whomever buys the house for the price of the land so they can put up a parking lot.

Even if I get the print out working, a daunting task, it will not include any links or video media. That kind of stuff will simply be lost. Really, the text is all I’m getting if I go after this method. I’ve been blogging for 10 years. That is 10 years of complaining on the internet just sitting there not getting read by anyone of interest to me. Maybe someone learned something worthwhile out there. Maybe I helped someone with something. What else can you hope for?