Data storage compatibility

1993/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Hardwarea

The problem presented by Fred Lerner in this news has been for many people. In short, the theme is that texts written on old computers cannot be used at present due to the incompatibility between them and the current ones.

A Lerner partner currently uses DOS or Macintosh systems. But from time to time, when you have to reuse or update the work done in your day, it is very difficult to implement this old information on current systems.

In addition, at a meeting held by the “American Society,” most people claimed that maintaining stored electronic information was necessary systematically. There are many scientific data that cannot be read on current computers and the work done on the magnetic systems that are currently used cannot be read within 20 years. While data stored on CD-ROMs last ten, one hundred or one thousand years, will there be a CD-ROM reading system at that time?

Faced with this problem, the most appropriate solution would be to implement the data in a new system that allows its availability over time. But when it is expensive to take this path, we should proceed to the selection of data. And who would make the data selection? What data to save and what not, why criterion? Two thousand years ago much information was left when moving from the scroll to the codes.

Apparently, a similar phenomenon will occur today.