How to store data for 100 years

Think for a moment: if you could send a file to the future for someone to open it within 100 years, how would you make it sure that it is still readable? That is the real challenge: the devices and formats that we have at our disposal were not designed to survive beyond A few years. Today’s technology tends to plan the immediate, without taking into account that physical supports degrade and that the formats evolve. For something to last a century, more than choose a storage support.

Neither hard or SSD discs are prepared for long -term conservation. According to Backblazethe annualized failures (AFR) rate of 2024 was 1.57% and some models reached around 4.5% in short periods. These values, of course, are assumed for daily operation, not for a horizon of a century like we point to.

In SSD, the ability to keep the data stored when it is not active or connected to energy falls with temperature and wear. He JEDEC standard Jesus218A can help us understand the scope: it demands at least 1 year at 30 ° C For conventional units and 3 months to 40 ° C in units oriented to business environments at the end of useful life. Once again, they are useful as operational copies, not as a centenary passive file.

Far from being obsolete, The magnetic tape is still a large -scale file pillar. LTO offers estimated durability of decades in good condition and a cost per competitive terabyte for “cold” storage. Organizations such as CERN Document of tape libraries with planned migrations. The market accompanies: in 2024 176.5 EB of compressed capacity, 15.4% more interannual were sent, more interannual, According to the consortium. The counterpart is clear: it requires compatible hardware and constant supervision.

Among the optical supports, Worm discs They still have room. The M-Disc paid well in accelerated aging testsbut the projections of centuries or millennia are Laboratory extrapolationsno independent consensus. In practice, we talk about decades and modest capabilities: useful as a legible copy with a compatible reader, little suitable for large volumes due to its slow writing.

Sometimes, the most advanced is not digital. The permanent role regulated by ISO 9706 and the microfilm with Le-500 qualification in ISO 18901They are still in force for critical documents. Its advantage is clear: they are read with light, without depending on software or energy, and have defined regulatory frameworks and storage requirements. Different regulators demand Le-500 for certain uses, which maintains these means in the “mix” of preservation. They are not worth Petabytes, but they are still reliable for the essential.

One of the great enemies is obsolescence. That is why many institutions plan format migrations before they are without compatible software or hardware. Many times, however, they must resort to techniques such as emulation To recreate old systems. It is not so different from what we see in the world of video games, when access to certain platforms is fading over time.

Beyond the present, there are developing technologies with centuries. Project Silica, from Microsoft, records laser quartz glass data. The company speaks of “tens to hundreds of thousands of years” of potential life. And, as we saw a while ago, he did a test storing ‘Superman’ (1978) in a 75.6 GB glass piece. DNA storage is another of the options tested in research environments. They are promising lines, still far from the general use.

Extending the life of the data does not depend only on support: budget, responsible and measurable objectives is needed. Governments and organizations already have plans to preserve long -term information, which implies well -defined strategies and periodic reviews. Today, when we talk about digital information, the great challenge is to save it in non -experimental supports that endure the passage of time without continuous supervision … and that can be read within a century.

Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 Pro | Microsoft

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