I remember speaking about InPhase's holo storage tech at ARMA 2005. As with
every storage announcement between then and now, the challenge is not the
media longevity generally. Rather, it's the availability of hardware to read
the media. This is a problem with all media types, but is a particular issue
when dealing with proprietary media formats. If hVault is the only company
that can make their special disks and readers, either they fail...or they
succeed well enough that someone else will make hVault-killer stuff, also
proprietary, etc. etc. etc. See also all the Blu-Ray killers out there like
UDO, Toshiba's HDD, etc. 

And the 800 zettabyte elephant in the room is software. I can predict with
almost absolute confidence that you will not be able to read Word 2010 files
from one of these disks 30 years in the future even if the media is
pristine. Furthermore, I strongly suspect the typical office computer will
not be able to read PDF, PDF/A, JPG, or any of the other standard formats we
use today. Drivers for that ancient 30-yo hVault drive will be a challenge
(play with any old printers or floppy drives lately?) but it's simply not
reasonable to expect then-current computers to read 30-year-old file
formats, at least any but the simplest ones like text and simple images. We
can barely read 10-year old ones in many instances and as the pace of
innovation continues to increase the pace at which formats obsolesce will as
well. 

I remain convinced that, to paraphrase Churchill, migration is the worst
approach to digital preservation today except for everything else. Any
organization copying software-based digital content to digital media and
expecting to be able to read it readily much further out than 10 years is
simply deluding itself. 

Usual caveats: these are my own thoughts and do not represent those of my
employer, past, present, future, or alternate reality-based. 

Happy thoughts on a gorgeous Colorado morning, 

Jesse Wilkins, CIP, CRM
Denver, CO
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Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessewilkins 

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