White paper - Alternative Storage Technologies

Magnetic Tape

Optical Disks

Hard Disk Drive

Cloud Microfilm piqlFilm

Projected lifetime 7

30

100

6

N/A

500

750+

Digital data

Analogue data 8

10

True WORM 9

Offline format 11

Instant retrieval

Vendor-neutral reading device

Migration-free storage medium

True archival format 12

7 General figures, there are variations from vendor to vendor 8 Human readable text or pictures 9 Write Once, Read Many, meaning the data is unalterable after being recorded on the storage medium 10 CD-R and DVD-R only 11 Does not require any maintenance of the medium to ensure data integrity 12 Self-contained format: descriptions of how the data is stored, file formats, information on how to decode the data, etc.