Comment by vrypan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vrypan | Hacker News Reader

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We believe that the average consumer needs more than a technical solution.

My latest laptop has no DVD drive, and I would bet that a DVD would not be more useful than a cassette tape to my daughter in 20 years, even if the data on it is in good shape. We may not even have the WWW by then, much like we don't have Gopher any more. What we offer is a service: we will do what it takes to keep the data in good shape and make them accessible to anyone holding an Archive Certificate.

The DoD, or large companies don't need this kind of service: they have the resources to manage, migrate, validate, replicate, etc, their data for as long as they are valuable to them. If DVDs start to fail, I'm sure they'll notice it, and they'll spend a gazillion dollars to move data to a new medium.

I don't think any consumer has a special week of the year when they take out all their DVDs and HDDs and verify them, make new copies, and replace the bad ones.

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Longaccess.

So - first, I made it very clear that an online solution such as yours is definitely part of an archival solution, for all of the benefits that you have listed, and I'm excited that longaccess exists, and looking forward to seeing you do great things in this space.

But, people should not rely solely on a third party solution for their archival needs. They should always have a copy of their data that is offline, and physically in their possession, in a ECMA-379/ISO-10995 certified format that will last a long time. Certified Archival Media, is precisely that - it's designed to last on the order of a 100 years or more with zero requirements to validate. If you are super paranoid then you could make two copies. Then, you have both of your bases covered; You have something you can touch, and is 100% under your control, and, simultaneously, Longaccess will take care of all of the hard work of checking integrity, reproducing data, transferring it from data system to data system (in whatever form that takes over the next 30 years), and otherwise ensuring that there is continuity of data which can be accessed by the user (or their descendants) from something as simple as a certificate.

And yes, I do agree that the achilles heal of DVD Archival Media is the very real possibility of there being no DVD players in 20-30 years from now. Here's hoping eBay is still around. :-)

We are on the same page.

There are almost 500 different cassette players on Amazon, a device and media that is completely irrelevant.

If there is any demand for something someone will produce it, whether or not it's the latest and greatest technology.

There will also be a great deal of notice before a device as important as DVD / Blu-Ray stops being produced. I'd say it's a non-issue, especially since a great deal of data is being backed up on these disks.

Of course, multiple backup types and locations is always safer.

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