![]() ![]() This guide will help you.Ī “proprietary” file format is a format that is developed by one particular company. To prevent this from happening, you have to choose your archiving formats wisely. ![]() This leads to what has been called the Digital dark age: the impossibility to read historical electronic documents and multimedia, because they have been recorded in an obsolete and obscure file format. The same fate may strike today’s MP3s, DOCX, or JPG one day. One day, they may become inaccessible for the average user. Today, few programs can read such a file. Think of file formats: Have you ever tried to open a “WRI” file on your computer? This was a popular document format. The only way to keep your data alive despite these changes is to constantly copy it from the older technology to the newer one.Īt the same time, media technology changes so rapidly that high longevity media is likely to be threatened by obsolescence before its useful life is over. However, cloud companies, likewise, may cease to exist. We may think that the cloud is the solution. Hard drives, for example, typically last around 5 years before they start becoming faulty. Furthermore, the devices themselves have a life span of about 10 years. Whenever a new technology comes up, support for the older technologies fades out. Physical storing devices change roughly every 10 years: It used to be floppy disks, then it was CDs, then DVDs, then flash drives (USB sticks), and now the cloud. ![]() There is first the problem of the storage medium. Scriptures carved in stone survive for millennia (the Code of Hammurabi is 3700 years old).ĭigital data does not survive in this way. We can even see the Cuthbert Gospel (1300 years old). We can still see the original US Declaration of Independence (200 years old). Old books and documents survive for centuries. For example, the paper diaries from our childhood still live on. We often take it for granted that this data will live on. Various ZIP implementations are still to be tested.We do not often realize it, but much of our life is nowadays digital:Īll our pictures: vacations, evenings out, trips, or weddingsĪll our emails, including those from friends, exes, pen-friends, and colleagues.įinally, all the documents on our computer: texts we wrote, that book that we started but never finished, tax documents, diaries, or scanned documents ![]() NET OPC impl), but has some scalability issues when it goes up to gigabytes. Fast enough on small to middle sizes (totally outruns. Does not support file names longer than 32 characters, which is a significant drawback in my case. Surprisingly, the implementation is incomplete, and it's deadly slow, even slower than OPC.ĭOC (COM Compound File Structured Storage, backend for MSO. ITSS (InfoTech Storage System, the backend of CHM files). NET-based, might be faster but does not span all of the OS versions I have to support. Note that there's also a Windows built-in implementation which is not. Built-in and standard, but quite slow, probably because it actually first copies all data to a temporary location in case it has to be compressed (even if it's not so), and only then writes to the final destination. OPC (Open Packaging Conventions, System.Packaging namespace, ZIP-based, backend for MSO. I had an additional requirement that the resulting pack file be browsable with standard tools (at least FAR Manager). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |