<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">There really isn't a perfect preservation medium. Optical media would seem to be the perfect choice since it is digital, small and cheap but the lifespan is suspect. Magnetic tape actually has performed better than many would have predicted: I see 50 year old tapes that play fine.<div><br></div><div>Stone cuttings work well but take up too much space. :-)</div><div><br></div><div>I have been told that hard drives don't take well to storage. Put one on the shelf and in a few years it won't spin up.</div><div><br></div><div>RAID 5 (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: -webkit-sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">striped disks with parity) is an excellent choice for on-line storage since it protects in case of a drive failure. A Quantel box I had used nine disks in an array, one for each bit and a parity drive. If any drive failed, the box would continue working until you replaced the failed drive and then automatically, in the background, rebuild the new drive.</span></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="-webkit-sans-serif" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br></span></font><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><div><div>Best,</div><div>Park</div><div><br></div></div><div>C. Park Seward</div><div>Visit us: <a href="http://www.videopark.com">http://www.videopark.com</a></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></div></span></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br><div><div>On Jan 6, 2009, at 6:22 AM, Steve Greene wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I'm well aware that digital files offer a number of advantages over video cassettes, but the National Archives is only starting to develop the kind of infrastructure needed to maintain those files as an archive. I don't trust a shelf of removable hard drives much more than I trust magnetic tape. Recordable DVD has too many interchange problems and is too fragile to qualify as a reference medium. </span></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>