I have a collection of LPsthat is, vinyl recordssitting at my fathers house in New York. Also sitting there is my turntable for playing said LPs. Neither made it with me to Cincinnati; I know I wont actually listen to the recordsIm more likely to buy the CD if theres anything I want to hear.
Thats a fine method for dealing with data (in this case, music) thats easily replaceable when the old format is no longer good. I can buy the CD or, in the worst case, hook up the turntable to the receiver to the computer and burn a CD.
The latter option is acceptable because I only have a few dozen LPs at most, and could convert them in a weekend if I felt the need. But theres no rush: Not only do I have a good turntable, but I know that I can still buy one if I needed to.
It gets a little stickier with the data I have on 5.25-inch diskscollege papers and stories that got lost and didnt make it over to my hard drive. Luckily, I still have a 5.25-inch drive I can install.
Luckily, too, all that old writing was done with PC-Write, an ASCII-based word processor I used way back when. With the exception of removing a few cryptic lines of formatting codes, I can take all that old writing and bring it into Microsoft Word, todays standard for documents.
On my small scale, not having old datamusic or college papersin a readily accessible format isnt a big deal. But the trouble I have to go through to access it would be increased exponentially (or worse) on a corporate level.
Backing up your data is a gimme. But it is not simply a matter of making a copy of your existing files in a secure location, unless you only plan to store them for a short time.
Long-term storage requires more than simply extra disk space. Technology changes too quickly; ask anyone who tries to open a Word 2000 document in Word 95. So if you plan to have your data accessible years from now, you need to make sure you store those data in a way youll know youll be able to use then.
That means avoiding proprietary binary data formats of any sort, including those belonging to Microsoft. If youre dealing with text, ASCII or Unicode is one safe bet, and RTF (rich text format) is probably good if you want to maintain formatting. HTML might be better, because its ASCII based and future word processors should be able to realize that whats between and need to be italicized.
But when it comes to data, ASCII isnt an option. Sure, XML and SGML are ASCII based, but you can bet the tags will change over the years; be prepared to do some converting. And neither works with the larger relational databases carriers use, or for data structures that include images. That means its important to not only have a backup of the data, but of whatever is required to access those data. You dont necessarily need a copy of your entire database structurealthough you might. It means you need to imagine that your database software will change dramatically by the time you need to access old information. Will you be able to read those old tapes or CDs in five years? Seven? You may have to install an old piece of softwareso make sure that software is around and that you have the ability to run it on whatever hardware you have available.
An old IBM friend insists that the only reliable long-term backup strategy would include all the hardware necessary to access the data. Why? For the same reason that I may have trouble rescuing the data from my 5.25-inch floppies: Hardware standards change. How long will the tape drives you use be around?
A smart and proper digital storage strategy need to take into account changing software standards and reduced hardware availabilityin short, it must hold its data in the lowest common denominator formata compromise between a format that will likely always be supported and one that contains all the information you need it to.
There are alternatives, of course. You can make sure to have spare hardware set aside in case of need, or you can schedule periodic reviews of your data storage situation to make sure youll have access when you need it. You can choose which approach you want to take, but smart money says youll need to take one of them.
Send your bright ideas tobrightideas@tdmag.com.
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