> I haven't read the SBO requirements, but from our internal auditors, it looks > like we need to have a good business > best efforts to keep readable for whatever retention period we publicize. > > In working with older tape technology in storing archive tapes, we found > that 20% of the tapes were not readable within 5 years. It seems that the > best idea for long term archives is they need to be re-read on a regular > basis (annually?) just to make sure they can be read.
Or refreshed. Actually when I raised the issue of the data being readable, I wasn't referring to hardware or media problems (though these are also good points), but the availability of software that can "understand" the data. For example, if you open a .zip file with a plain text editor, the content will appear as so much garbage. Without a zip program that can make sense of the data, being able to restore a .zip file doesn't give you anything useful (at least not without an awful lot of hacking). .zip is a common format and likely to be available in the future, but what about more obscure formats, where maybe you archive the files while you use the product? Suppose you switch to a new product that uses a different format, then decide 10 years from now you need to retrieve the data that was used by the old product. Will you still have a copy of that old product around that will run on current operating systems and hardware? Even if you archived the software and could in theory restore and run it, do you know where, amongst all that archive data, the software is? Will your successors be able to find the data and the software? Will they even know which software they need to run? Regards, Andy Andy Raibeck IBM Software Group Tivoli Storage Manager Client Development Internal Notes e-mail: Andrew Raibeck/Tucson/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Internet e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The only dumb question is the one that goes unasked. The command line is your friend. "Good enough" is the enemy of excellence.