Apparently, in some countries, they are founded, usually somewhere underground, in specially created bunkers capable of surviving climatic disasters and other banks of large collections of information on the achievements of human civilization gathered on digital data carriers.
These are properly secured Big Data database systems, data warehouses, underground information banks, digitally recorded.
The underground bunkers themselves can survive various climatic and other calamities for perhaps hundreds or thousands of years.
But how long will the large collections of information survive in these Big Data systems and data warehouses stored on digital media?
Perhaps a better solution would be to write this data analogically on specially created discs?
Already in the 1970s, a certain amount of data concerning the achievements of human civilization was placed on the Pioneer 10 probe sent to space that recently left the solar system and will be nearest 10,000 year flying with the information about human civilization to the Alpha Centauri constellation.
At that time, the amount of data sent to the Universe regarding the achievements of human civilization was recorded on gold discs.
Is there a better form of data storage at the moment when this data should last thousands of years?
Please reply
Best wishes
Theoretically thousands years unless unexpected disasters occur...
The old Egyptians found a method to manage this and there are more technologies from Mesopotamia and cave drawings of course.
Material is not the problem. DNA survives a million years. Glass, crystals, ceramics even more. A future civilization must be educated enough to recognize the archive as such, and must be able to build hardware to read data out. The earth has plate tectonics, continents will vanish and arise. The moon has no atmosphere, so even tiny meteorites hit the surface. Here is some reading.
Preprint Towards Gigayear Storage Using a Silicon-Nitride/Tungsten Based Medium
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page
https://phys.org/news/2014-02-optical-storage-virtually-unlimited-lifetime.html
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/data-for-the-31st-century
https://phys.org/news/2013-07-5d-optical-memory-glass-evidence.html
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/520541/million-year-data-storage-disk-unveiled/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KEO
http://www.keo.org/uk/pages/message.php
Regards,
Joachim
"But how long will the large collections of information survive in these Big Data systems and data warehouses stored on digital media?" If this is the focus of your set of questions, my first answer had been addressing a different issue, which is also of some importance in this context. But there are a lot of technologies in daily use in data centres all over the world keeping all data safe. There is a lingering misunderstanding how data is kept in data centres. It's not the case that "new" data is written to a certain type of storage and will remain there forever. Basic storage technologies develop with a new generation every 10 up to 20 years. Storage hardware needs to be replaced every 5 up to 10 years, not only because it wears off, but just because the manufacturer doesn't support longer periods of service.
Consequently data centre managers keep track with this and replace old hardware by new technology and all the data is moved to its new storage location.
To be prepared for various kinds of disasters, important data is backed up (to tape for instance), synchronously or/and asynchronously copied to a "mirror device", secured by "continuous data protection (CDP)" or just sheltered by basic instruments using redundancy in combination with simple algorithms like with RAID.
These concepts are not bound to any actual storage hardware and can be taken over within the steady process of hardware renewal and data migration. One could name this Information Life Cycle Management (ILM).
Theoretically thousands years unless unexpected disasters occur...
Yes ...really nice comment Mr. Frank Schmitz ....(one should expect the unexpected)....
Dear Colleagues and Friends from RG, Some of the largest globally operating IT technology companies are researching the possibility of building databases based on the Big Data DNA concept. Research shows that if it was possible to build digital structures imitating the coding system found in the genomes of living organisms, in chromosomes, i.e. according to the structures of the genetic code of DNA, or if it was possible to build supercomputers whose memory disks would be built of DNA-based biocybernetic structures then huge amounts of information could be stored in one personal computer. This huge amount of information could be comparable to a significant portion of all current knowledge accumulated, e.g. in Internet resources and / or many existing largest databases combined. Accordingly, if it was possible to build digital structures imitating the coding system found in the genomes of living organisms, in chromosomes, i.e. according to the structures of the genetic code of DNA, or if it was possible to build supercomputers whose memory disks would be built of biocybernetic structures based on DNA then to make a huge step in technological progress in the field of information technology, cybernetics and Big Data database technologies.
Do you agree with me on the above matter?
In view of the above, the following questions arise:
- Do any of you conduct research in this area?
- Can anyone of you send me literature or scientific publications about current research in this field?
- Do you think database technologies will be able to be based on the Big Data DNA concept in the future?
- Is anyone currently trying to build a database based on the Big Data DNA concept?
- What is your opinion on this topic?
Please reply.
I invite you to discussion and scientific cooperation.
Thank you very much.
Best wishes.
Dariusz Prokopowicz
Dear Frank Schmitz, Joachim Pimiskern, Dr.Mohammad Ahmad Abdalla, Thank you for the proposed interesting issues in the field Big Data database systems, in data warehouses, underground information banks. You described the problem very well. I fully agree with your opinion on this topic. Thank you very much for the interesting information and inspiration to continue deliberations on the above-mentioned issues. This discussion confirms the importance of the above-mentioned issues and the legitimacy of developing scientific research in the subject Big Data database systems, in data warehouses, underground information banks. Thank you for your answers and confirmation of the above theses. Best wishes,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
Part of the bigger problem is not of technology but of the process of technology. Information technologies have a lifespan were they become obsolete and this is an even greater risk because of the financial burden of updating the systems on top of the average lifespan of the hardware. Survivable systems need to take into account software obsolescence (remember the FLV format domination and where it is today ? What about wordperfect files?). What happens if one invests in the wrong storage technology formats and there is no conversion mechanism or its format of compression is lossy? How does this degrade the integrity of the data over the lifespan being contemplated of decades or centuries?
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