# Storage Media > Reflecting on digital heritage: in 27 years in IT, I have seen dozens of media and formats come and go. How can data survive for centuries if even 30 years is uncertain? - Canonical page: https://shorin.me/en/blog/2024/05/storage-device/ - Page language: English - Published: 2024-05-13 - Tags: BibliotecaApostolicaVaticana, Preservation, Management - Russian version: https://shorin.me/blog/2024/05/storage-device/index.md In the comments on my [post](https://shorin.me/en/blog/2024/04/analog-storage/index.md) about analogue storage media, [Evgeny Kukharenko](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekukharenko) pointed out how hard it is to “choose a format that the digital crowd, intermediaries, and other business players will NOT stop supporting”. Over my 27 years in IT, I have used the following physical media: - Floppy disks: I even caught the five-inch era – we used those in the computer lab at MSU’s Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics to submit practical assignments – as well as the classic three-inch disks; - HDDs; - ArVid (storing data on videocassettes); - CDs (CD-Audio, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-RW+, CD-RW- – I do not even want to know how the last three differ from one another); - DVDs and Blu-ray discs (there are countless varieties of those too – Wikipedia can help you there); - Memory cards (listing all the varieties would be exhausting); - USB flash drives (with different connector types and different versions of the USB protocol); - SSDs; - And now people are talking about quantum storage media. Then there are the elaborate systems built around all of this: CD/DVD/BD robot clusters, NAS, SAN, DAS, and so on. At home, I have: - Had my videocassettes transferred to DVD by companies that provide this service; - Copied my CDs and DVDs to the cloud and a local NAS using a USB-C-to-USB-A adapter and a USB DVD drive. But I still have not got around to my Blu-ray discs or floppy disks :( I have a floppy disk containing the first program I ever wrote. I am afraid to look for a floppy drive and try to read it. I would most likely be bitterly disappointed – I doubt it is readable any more. So I keep the disk like Scrooge McDuck keeps the first coin he ever earned. And so far, we have only talked about physical media. What about file formats, editing software, and operating systems? How will I open a file created in Turbo Pascal under MS-DOS in 1996? It is a plain text file, yet even that presents problems: encoding, CR/LF line endings – and those are only the issues I know about. How many more would emerge in practice? And it has been less than 30 years. What operating systems and editors will we use 30 years from now? Will we be able to open and read today’s DOCX, HEIC, and PDF files? Who knows how computers, operating systems, and editors will evolve over those 30 years? Do you? I do not. The Vatican Library has set itself the task of preserving digital copies of its 500 most valuable books for 500 years. How can we guarantee that we will be able to read them in 500 years if we cannot even think 30 years ahead? To be continued... ## Media ## Original posts - LinkedIn: