Long-term archiving of digital data on film

In our digital age with its permanently growing amount of data worldwide, long-term storage of digital information is a challenging task. Especially data being valuable from cultural or economic points of view deserves adequate protection, but also private data, such as digital images may be irreplaceable. Unfortunately, conventional storage media often exhibit relatively limitedlifetimes. Furthermore, the long-term availability of corresponding reading devices is a crucial issue to ensure the read-out of the data in the future. As a consequence, today`s digital archives are normally based on the principle of data migration, i. e., re-copying the data in certain time intervals to different media or storage systems. This requires a permanent flow of financial resources, which cannot be guaranteed especially in times of economic or political crises. Moreover, with respect to forgery or data security aspects, accessing the data for migration may be not desirable. In the context of „Green IT“ also the power consumption of storage systems increasingly gains attention.