I’m looking for a reference of statistics on long-term storage/archive reliability for various types of media. That is, I’m looking for information, comparisons, charts, graphs, test results, etc. on how long data can reliably be stored on as many types of media as possible (e.g., floppy, tape, CD, DVD, flash-drives/memory cards, HD, SSD, device firmware/EEPROMS, heck, even punch-cards and stone tablets if they have it).

Obviously there won’t be data on things like 50-year reliability for DVDs, but presumably the data would be updated as time goes by, similar to antivirus comparison databases.

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2 Answers

There' some fine article at LinuxTECH.NET on Best reliable long-term data storage media which might answer your question at least partly. Other sources of interest may include:

• A slide on Long Term Data Storage 2007
• Server Fault's Q&A Tape vs SSDs backups regarding long-term storage reliability
• SuperUser: What medium should be used for long term, high volume, data storage (archival)?
• SuperUser: How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?
• SuperUser: Covenience/Cost/Life expectancy of storage media
• A PDF about Data Reliability by Hie Electronics
• ServerFault's Q&A Cost effective, long term archival of video and image data?
• A PDF on A Fresh Look at the Reliability of Long-term Digital Storage
• Another PDF: Understanding Data Survivability in Archival Storage Systems
• Stability Comparison of Recordable Optical Discs
• Long-Term Usability of Optical Media (maybe a bid broad and no specific statistic details)

Furthermore, it might be worth to investigate some of the following Wikipedia article's references:

• Digital preservation
• Enterprise content management
• Data storage device
• Archival science

Each of the mentioned documents contains pieces of answers to your question -- though none may be a summary including overall statistics.

EDIT:

A quite comprehensive one is Challenges of Long-Term Digital Archiving: A Survey -- this might include almost all information you are looking for. As probably does the mdisc china lake study...

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The only thing I could find is "Langzeitarchivierung" on the German Wikipedia. It has less information than you asked for, but a lot of references.

English Translation with Google Translate

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