Data Preservation and How Ancient Egypt Got It Right

Subtitle: Rocks Don't Need to Be Backed Up

Henry Newman has written an interesting article for the Enterprise Storage Forum web site that describes the decline in data lifetime:

"In some ways, the Egyptians with their simpler approach were far better off than we are at recording and saving information. Just look at the well preserved [Egyptian] obelisk as you consider all the formats you probably have lying around that can no longer be accessed, from 5.25-inch floppy disks to 8-track tapes and old home movies. What would it take to preserve those for 3,500 years?

"After rocks, the human race moved on to writing on animal skins and papyrus, which were faster at recording but didn't last nearly as long. Paper and printing presses were even faster, but also deteriorated more quickly. Starting to see a pattern? And now we have digital records, which might last a decade before becoming obsolete. Recording and handing down history thus becomes an increasingly daunting task, as each generation of media must be migrated to the next at a faster and faster rate, or we risk losing vital records.

"Paper was the medium of choice until about 10 to 15 years ago."

You can find this interesting article at: http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/continuity/features/article.php/3812496.

Comments

[Rob]

Why not develop a technology that would allow storage of data into a block of crystal-rock made to last forever. We've been storing data via electronic means but storing data via magnetic imprinting into crystal-rocks and be retrievable/readable by magno-electronic means is possible, theoretically-speaking.

It is something very similar to the crystal-rocks seen in the Superman movies.

[Bill Buchanan]

We should be able to use existing laser-engraving technology to etch documents (text and images) onto thin plates of stainless steel that should last almost forever.

[Ben Franklin]

Ancient Egyptians kept records on a variety of media. Stone-based records are the most obvious. However, vast sections of stone-based records have indeed been lost forever, and their meaning was completely absent for centuries, until the Rosetta Stone was discovered.

Similarly, the fire at the library of Alexandria (which burned hundreds of thousands of volumes of paper-like scrolls, parchments, and such) was a tragedy that reverberates down through the ages.

Almost all that is left are faint echoes of the richness of the materials that they had access to - about the same as if all of our paper were completely destroyed and one were reduced to reading inscriptions on our buildings.

So, they are certainly an example - one that we should try to learn from and not emulate.

[Tennessee Tuxedo]

Dick,

Those Egyptian monuments would still be unreadable if it were not for the lucky find of the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the language.

The media is only part of the package.

[Stan Lipson]

Is there a genealogist who has not sometime tramped through a graveyard only to find weathered stones barely two or three hundred years old with unreadable inscriptions? I would imagine that their carvers thought that by carving in stone they were preserving the data for us and all who follow. [Hmmm. Remind anyone of a poem?] Let us not fall into the same trap. One of the greatest problems facing any historian is (and probably always will be) data backup and constant migration to new technologies.