May 2, 2022 • 44 mins
It's hard to hold onto information. Paradoxically, it can also be hard to get rid of it. In this episode, we look at why long-term data preservation is a challenge, and the lengths people will go to in order to clear out digital information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with I Heart Radio and
how the tech are yet. You know, I thought it
might be interesting to talk about how data can both
be easy to lose and hard to lose. It's a paradox,
(00:29):
but really this is all about the media upon which
we store data and how that media can pose various challenges. Now,
first up, let's just talk about the concept of obsolescence.
So as our technology, our language, our culture, as all
these things evolve and we discover new ways to commit
(00:53):
information to different types of media, we often leave the
older methods behind. For example, very few people are recording
audio to wax cylinders today. For example, you know, Thomas
Edison did it, but you don't see people doing it now,
at least not outside of you know, historical demonstrations and
that sort of thing. The days of storing info magnetically
(01:16):
onto strips of metal, like we saw at the end
of the nineteenth century, that's pretty far behind us too,
although magnetic tape is built on the same principle. But
before we use tape, we used wire um, not that frequently,
but it was one of those things that kind of
paved the way toward magnetic tape. Now, over time, all
(01:37):
media will ultimately go obsolete, either because the stuff we
recorded upon has worn out, the actual physical stuff has broken,
or because we've lost the ability to retrieve information from
that type of media. And that inability to retrieve can
range from the technical to just our knowledge of how
(01:58):
to do it. So let's take a moment to consider
something that is pretty far removed from modern technology unless
you watch stargate, and that is hieroglyphs. So thousands of
years ago, the people of ancient Egypt developed a writing
system that was complicated, to say the least. So our
(02:19):
Latin alphabet, the one that we use in in English,
for example, has twenty six characters, right, twenty six letters
in the alphabet, and hieroglyphs had hundreds of characters, like
a thousand or more. Now, some of the characters in
ancient Egypt represented basic phonemes. Phonemes are sounds within a language, right,
(02:44):
like would be a phoneme or like these are basic sounds.
But other characters in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs they represented entire words,
or at least parts of words. Uh. Some represented still bles,
so not necessarily parts of words like you would think,
(03:05):
but a syllable that was common in ancient Egypt. But
over the millennia, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs
faded from Egyptian culture. There were a lot of reasons
for this, I mean, the the style of writing down
information changed from hieroglyphs to like demonic writing, and beyond also,
(03:26):
you had folks like you know, Europeans, like Greeks and
Romans who were invading Egypt and changing things and disrupting
Egyptian culture significantly. By the time we got a few
centuries into the common era, pretty much no one knew
how to read the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt anymore. So
we had all this knowledge stored in various places and
(03:50):
no way to retrieve that knowledge. It appeared as though
we had lost all of it, or that we had,
due to some misconceptions, completely miss interpreted that knowledge. So
by the time we got into the medieval era, there
was this prevailing hypothesis that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were symbolic
(04:11):
in meaning and by that I mean that the images
that the Egyptians used were thought of to be direct
symbols of whatever the message was. So let's say you
had images of a boat and a snake, then you
might be led to think that what you're looking at
must be an allegorical story about snakes on a boat,
possibly starring Samuel L. Jackson. But no, the symbols used
(04:36):
weren't meant to represent exactly what they looked like. They
represented elements of a language. So for example, if you
want to understand what I'm saying, our letter S looks
kind of like a snake, right, but it doesn't mean snake.
When you see the letter S, that doesn't mean snake. Uh.
It could be the beginning of the word snake. Obviously
(04:58):
that begins with S, but it could mean anything. It
represents the S sound, which is found in lots of words,
not just snake. And the hieroglyphs were similar, but no
one had a document that matched hieroglyphs to some other
known language so that someone could actually decipher the symbols.
So it just seemed to be, you know, all these
(05:19):
icons that the meaning had been completely lost. But then
came Napoleon Bonaparte and his armies invaded Egypt toward the
end of the eighteenth century, and in the process the
armies happened across something incredibly important, and it would later
be called the Rosetta Stone. Now, the Rosetta Stone itself
(05:41):
is a type of monument, and there are carvings on
the monument that represent an official dynastic decree. The carvings
are in three different written languages. So at the base
of the monument you have the carving in ancient Greek,
above that is Demotic, that is an Egyptian language that
(06:01):
followed the hieroglyphic language, and at the top are hieroglyphs.
And since all three carvings represented the same decree, this
gave experts the opportunity to finally begin deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and so began the long process of uncovering lost knowledge.
And this was helped by subsequent discoveries of similar decrees,
(06:25):
so that we over time we're able to understand what
these these hieroglyphs actually stood for. We understood that it
was a written language that wasn't just purely symbolic. Now,
my point in telling the story is that we have
to remind ourselves that while we have ways to record knowledge,
(06:45):
it would be foolish for us to assume that any
way that we use is permanent, because we've got plenty
of examples of knowledge being lost in the past, whether
it's because people forgot how to access that knowledge, or
maybe the knowledge was based in folklore and the people
that were the stewards of that knowledge were wiped out
(07:07):
or assimilated and the knowledge was lost, or maybe the
physical copies, if it was like a written language, maybe
the physical copies were lost. And shout out to the
late Great Library of Alexandria, which I should add kind
of faded away, not just because of the famous fire
set by Julius Caesar's forces, though that clearly was a
(07:28):
catastrophic event, but also there was a long period in
which leaders were cracking down on scholars because well, a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so a lot of
knowledge has got to be absolutely deadly right. But anyway,
let's skip ahead to the modern era. So even today
we run the risk of losing access to information because
(07:50):
we no longer make the stuff, what plays the media
that we used in the old days, or at least
in many cases, it is getting really tricky to track
down the components that can retrieve data from those types
of media. Right, you might be able to find old
working equipment that can access certain types of stuff that
(08:10):
otherwise we no longer can access, but it's it's rare
that you're gonna find someone make a new version of that.
It's not impossible. It's not like we've lost all ability
to It's just that unless there is a pressing financial
benefit to creating that kind of stuff, no one's gonna
bother to do it. Because you know, it's expensive to
(08:33):
produce older types of of technologies, and unless there's a
financial incentive, no one's gonna do it. Um, it's sad
to say so. There's also the danger that the media
we rely upon could wear out and deteriorate over time. So,
for example, let's consider celluloid or film. Cinematic film degrades
(08:56):
over time, particularly if it's in a hot and moist environment.
And you might have heard about some filmmakers storing prints
of their movies or masters of their movies in old
salt mines such as the one that's below Hutchinson, Kansas
in the United States. These subterranean spaces maintain a constant
(09:18):
temperature of around sixty eight fahrenheit or twenty celsius, and
they have a low humidity somewhere between like forty humidity.
Of course, movies are not the only thing stored in
those minds that in fact, we got the idea because
of the story of the monument men who ended up
finding lots of stolen art from various parts of Europe
(09:42):
that the Nazis had collected and stored in salt mines.
We ended up kind of using the same idea. So,
because it's a great way to preserve stuff, if you
otherwise it's in danger of deterioration. Also, we have to
acknowledge that while it's a great way to preserve stuff,
there's a tragedy year because we're also removing it right
from us. You know, we're storing it and we're preserving it,
(10:06):
but to what end if you can't access it, then
it doesn't really like there's a lot of questions. There
are philosophical questions. If you have a priceless work of
art stored an assault mine and no one can go there,
is it the same as not having it at all?
Now in the case of film. A lot of studios
will actually use those master recordings when they want to
(10:29):
do a remastered version of the film they want to
release it on, say like Blu ray or something, they'll
go to the the original print that's stored in a
salt mine and they'll pull from that. But yeah, there's
lots of other stuff besides just film down there, anything
that needs a controlled environment in order to stop or
at least slow deterioration. Now, magnetic tape is another important
(10:52):
storage method, and we've been using magnetic tape as storage
since the mid twenty century, around nine or so, and
again the basic principle behind it dates back to the
late nineteenth century. That was when we were using magnetic wire.
But whether it's real to real tape, or cassettes or
(11:13):
VHS tapes, we've relied on this methodology to store all
sorts of information, from you know, computer information to music
in the case of like the cassette tapes of the
eighties nineties or the VHS video tapes, all sorts of
info we have committed to magnetic tape, and a lot
(11:34):
of companies still rely on magnetic tape for long term
storage and backups. When I use long term storage. I'm
speaking relatively, as we will see now, some older forms
of magnetic tape are largely obsolete because the devices we'd
use to read the data from them are out of production.
You might find a working device here or there, but
(11:56):
they can be pretty rare, and being mechanical in nature,
they will eventually require maintenance or they'll stop working. And
when you're talking about this kind of stuff, often you're
talking about things that have parts that no one's making anymore.
So it becomes very challenging to keep them in good
working order because there's a limited supply of components you
can use to make replacements when something breaks down. On
(12:19):
top of all that, magnetic information itself can degrade over time,
actually can degrade really quickly if it's in the presence
of a strong magnetic field, which is why as a
kid I was told never to bring a magnet close
to a computer or computer disks because you could actually
uh corrupt information that's stored on those those devices, because
(12:41):
the magnet would realign the magnetic components that were on
this plastic film or in the case of a computer,
uh arraid on a platter inside the hard disk drive. Now,
on average if stored in decent conditions, magnetic tape typically
will retained data from anywhere between ten to twenty years.
(13:03):
When stored in prime conditions like in that salt mine,
for example, you might stretch it to around thirty years.
So magnetic tape can hold onto data for a while,
but certainly not indefinitely. It will sooner or later degrade
to a point where the the information will be corrupted
or irretrievable. Now, on a similar note, let's talk floppy disks.
(13:28):
So when I was a kid, our Apple to E
computer had a five and a quarter inch floppy disk drive.
These were not the first floppy discs. There were older ones.
There were larger ones. IBM created eight inch floppy disks
for example, And the disks that I was familiar with
back when I was using the Apple to E were
these plastic envelopes, and the envelopes were covering a disc
(13:51):
of magnetic film on the inside, and it was on
this magnetic disc that you could save and retreat data.
And I actually had to look this up because I
could not remember it myself, but the original five and
a quarter inch floppy disks could hold up to nine
bytes of data. That's when they were first created, so
(14:12):
that's just ninety kilobytes. But over time, you know, engineers
improved the technology. They increased the capacity of floppy disks. Typically,
they did this by creating more precise read write heads
so they could store data in smaller physical sizes, which
meant you could cram more of it onto the same
(14:34):
sized disc. They also figured out how to multilayer discs,
so that increased storage as well. I think, you know,
some disks maxed out at around so significantly more than
ninety but still weigh less than what we use today.
Now I'm gonna talk more about floppy disks and other
(14:54):
forms of storage and why all these different types kind
of a limited shelf life of one span or another.
But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
we're back, and we were talking about floppy discs. Well,
(15:17):
my parents write novels, and so my dad's first books,
which were written in the early eighties, they were written
on that old Apple to E computer, and he would
save chapters of his books too floppy disks. Each novel
would take up several discs, like I don't know, around
a dozen or so. I can't quite remember I remember
we had disc holders that would hold like maybe three
(15:41):
of his novels, because that's how many discs would be
taken up just by you know, storing chapters onto them.
I'm not sure if he actually still owns those floppy discs,
but I imagine that even if he does, he doesn't
have any way to check and see if the data
is still there or not. He would need an Apple
to E or an emulator to simulate an Apple to
(16:03):
E on another machine. Plus he would have to have
a floppy disk drive connected to whatever computer he was
using in order to try and read those disks. And
floppy disk drives are not completely gone. They you can
still find them. They are increasingly rare, however, so it's
easy to imagine that a day will come when anything
(16:24):
stored on disks like that, like my dad's books, will
just become lost simply because no one makes the stuff
capable of reading it anymore. And the stuff that already
exists will eventually break down. Um and you know, the
the actual magnetic information on the discs will degrade over
(16:45):
time to just like with magnetic tape. The eventually you'll
you'll have some of those magnetic particles move out of alignment.
That's going to corrupt your data. I know, I keep
saying data and data. I know I do that. I
don't know why do that, and I can't predict when
it happens. It just does. I apologize for it though,
because I know it drives some of you crazy, and
(17:06):
my apologies. It just happens anyway, Those particles will move
out of alignment, the information gets corrupted. So yeah, switch
to information there, and then you can't retrieve it anymore.
So that can happen to even if you have a
working computer system that could theoretically pull that information off
the disk. Sometimes the information on the disc itself will
(17:26):
become corrupt. Now, we also have to keep in mind
that media that we still use today because hardly. I mean,
people do still use floppy disks depending on the situation,
but it's pretty rare. But even the stuff that we
do use today, eventually that's gonna become obsolete too. Just
a few years ago, compact discs were the go to
for data storage, at least for personal computers, though a
(17:48):
lot of enterprises would continue to rely on magnetic tape
for more long term backups, and compact discs are a
type of optical storage, meaning that rather than using magnetism
to align tiny particles on a physical surface, we're using
lasers to write and to read from these disks. UH,
(18:10):
the information is stored in water called pits and lands,
pits being designated pit in the surface, and lands being
the spaces between PITSU. The rewriteable CD is actually kind
of use foggy and clear UH sections that are very
very tiny. You wouldn't be able to see them with
the naked eye. Now, compact discs allow us to create
(18:32):
a more dense storage system, so we could put way
more information on a single CD than we could with
stuff like floppy disks. Now, unlike cassettes and floppy disks,
optical discs are not affected by magnetism. So if you
did bring a powerful magnet close to a bunch of
floppy disks or cassette tapes or anything that uses magnetic storage,
(18:53):
you would scramble the information on there because the powerful
magnet would realign the magnetic particles that are on the tape.
But optical discs don't have magnetic particles, so they would
be immune to that kind of interference. However, this does
not mean that optical discs last forever, so the there
(19:14):
are many layers on a compact disc. Same thing with
DVDs and blue race, by the way, there are several
layers involved, and these layers can have chemical reactions in them,
and those chemical reactions can cause those layers to degrade
over time. So like a CD that's stored in a
very humid and warm place, like if people had stored
(19:37):
their CDs, their music CDs inside their car in the
summer and Georgia, they might find that those CDs don't
last that long, like they might last a few seasons,
but eventually they degrade and they you know, if you're
in a hot and humid environment, then disc is going
to degrade faster, not like instantaneously, but it will start
(19:59):
to degrade faster than it would if you stored it
in a cooler, dry place. And that outer layer on
a CD, that's the clear layer, right, it's protective and
it's clear so that a laser can go through it.
But sometimes that clear layer can start to rot away
and it can leave the reflective layer that's underneath it exposed.
(20:21):
And with some CDs, that reflective layer is made up
of a silver or sometimes a silver compound and silver
when exposed to air will tarnish. The tarnished silver won't
reflect a laser properly, and so you start to get
errors when you're trying to read information off of that
kind of c D. Now, not all CDs were made
(20:43):
that way, right, so only some CDs have this particular
bronzing issue. In fact, our research group determined that the
c ds that really have this specific problem we're all
pressed in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, between the year's nineteen eight
and nineteen nine D three. That's pretty darn specific. Now.
(21:04):
The issue here, though, is that there's really no way
to give an average lifespan for a compact disc because
there's no such thing as an average compact discs. There
were there were so many different manufacturing and pressing processes
and recording processes that different ones could last a different
(21:25):
you know, theoretical maximum amount of time. So we can't
really answer the question how long on average will a
s c D last. I've seen a lot of people
suggest five to ten years, some people saying ten to twenty,
some people going as far as fifty. I think it
really depends on the way the CD was made and
what storage facility it's in, Like, is it in a
(21:47):
house where it's kept out of sunlight because UV radiation
can affect c D suh. Is it kept cool and dry,
then it's gonna last longer. Is it not handled a lot?
Like if it's your favorite music CD and you handle
it a lot, then it's gonna degrade faster. Again, not instantaneously,
(22:07):
and it may not even be noticeable at first, but
eventually you might get the things where it starts to
skip on a certain track, or it won't even play
certain tracks. That will happen over time. It's a similar
story for other optical formats, which include you know, DVDs
and Blu ray discs. These two have a limited lifespan,
though that lifespan may stretch to as long as a
(22:30):
century under ideal conditions. In a century is a long
time for a single person, right, I mean, that's that's
a significant amount of time. However, if we step outside
of a humans lifespan and we look at it from
the perspective of, you know, a historical account, then a
hundred years is not long at all. I mean, imagine
(22:53):
for a moment, if you had no access to any
information that was recorded before nineteen twenty because all the
media that we had used to record info on had
fallen apart or was otherwise unusable or inaccessible, that nothing
before nineteen twenty two would be knowable apart from what
(23:14):
people wrote about those times post nineteen two. That would
be crazy, right, But that's the kind of situation we're
in when we start looking at digital information. All right, Well,
what about we look at like hard drives, hard disk
drives and solid state drives, you know, the stuff that's
in your computer systems, your smartphones, that kind of thing.
(23:37):
What what do they have? You know, how long will
information last in those? Well, they stored information in different ways.
Hard disk drives have one or more platters in them,
and each platter has a magnetic coding on it upon
which information can be stored. So, just like cassettes and
(23:57):
floppy disks and other magnetic storage methods, hard disk drives
can be affected by powerful magnetic fields because they too,
store information magnetically. Hard disk drives have moving parts, so
the platters spin quite quite quickly in fact, and an
actuator mechanical arm with a ReadWrite quote unquote head on it.
(24:20):
This is the bit that either can read the magnetic
particles that are stored on a platter, or it can
actually exert a magnetic field that aligns the particles. When
you're writing information on the platter, it moves across the
platter and it starts to retrieve or right information to
the disc itself. And because we're talking about moving parts here,
(24:45):
stuff can and does wear down over time and use.
If it gets a lot of use, it wears out
more quickly. Also, it means that you should be gentle
when you're moving anything that happens to have a hard
disk drive inside of it, because a good whack and
damage the delicate parts. If you knock that actuator arm
out of alignment, that's a big problem. It's it's going
(25:07):
to be impossible to read or write stuff reliably to
that hard disk drive. Now, hard drives don't tend to
last very long because of those mechanical parts. I've seen
estimates of the lifespan for hard disk drives lasting somewhere
between three two maybe six and a half years, seven years.
(25:28):
Some give it a little bit longer, some a little
bit shorter. Of course, a hard disk drive can last
longer than a decade, but that's you know, if we're
looking at typical use and we're looking at the average
lifespan of hard disk drives, we tend to fall on
that three to seven year range. So your mileage may vary.
(25:49):
It may depend upon how you use your hard disk
drive and the setting that you're in. So they will
eventually break down. Also, even if they don't down sooner
or later, really later, that magnetic information will start to
move out of alignment just naturally. And so even if
(26:10):
you were to preserve a hard disk drive perfectly and
come back to it in a century, chances are a
lot of the information would no longer be accessible because
the actual magnetic particles would no longer be in the
proper alignment. Solid state drives store information in a totally
different way from hard disk drives, So instead of aligning
(26:32):
magnetic particles, and ss D stores information through flash memory
similar to USB sticks and other types of flash drives.
These drives store information using nanned flash that's in a
n D and that in turn is composed of what
are called floating gate transistors. And all of this gets
(26:53):
super technical, but let's just kind of imagine it this way.
Each floating gate can be either charged, which means it's
a zero, or it could be non charged, which means
it's a one. So it gets a little bit confusing
because we often think of binary with zero being off
and one being on. But in this case, zero means
that there is a charge in a cell and one
(27:15):
means there is no charge in that cell, and a
drive is made up of a grid of these cells.
So USB flash drives and s s d s are
non volatile memory. That means that they retain information even
if they are not receiving power. Right, So, if you
were to turn off your computer and it has an
SSD drive in it, you didn't just wipe out everything
(27:38):
that was stored on that SSD. It remains there. However,
if an S s D goes without power for an
extended period, so we're talking like five to ten years here,
it can experience what is called bit rot That is,
some of those charged gates might lose their charge without
access to power, and over time the information degrades. So
(28:02):
s s d s are not immune to deterioration either.
You know, given enough time, the information on those will
be corrupted as well. Without any other external forces being
applied to the S s D s well, what about
cloud storage, because that's changed everything, right. I mean, there's
so much of the information that we use day to
(28:23):
day that isn't even stored on our our native device
at all, or what is stored in our native devices
a temporary representation of that file. The actual file lives
in the cloud. Well, assuming that the company that's providing
the storage remains strong, data stored in the cloud tends
(28:44):
to be pretty darn resilient. And that's because in order
to provide a reputable cloud storage service, or really any
cloud service, companies have to ensure redundancy. Now, that just
means that any information that's stored to the cloud system
has to be stored on multiple machines, because remember, cloud
(29:05):
just means someone else's computer. That's really what the cloud is.
When you're storing stuff in the cloud, it's not like
just floating around in the Internet. It's being stored on
servers that are part of some massive data server farm
that are owned by some even more massive company like
(29:25):
Amazon or Microsoft or Google. Now, the reason why these
companies store the information on multiple machines is that should
a single machine holding information malfunctions or I don't know,
it goes on fire, or something. There are backups on
other machines, so the customer ideally never even notices that
(29:50):
there's any problem. There's no interruption of service, there's no delay,
their information is still on quote unquote the cloud, when
really it's on multiple machines. So this is important because
most of these data server farm places, they're using really
cheap components, like lots of them, but they're inexpensive and
(30:10):
it's you know, it's just off the shelf inexpensive components
to store all this information or to run processes. Uh.
That's what allows them to have this kind of redundancy
because they're not spending ridiculous amounts of money to get
state of the art machines in there. They don't need that.
They just need machines that are you know, more or
(30:31):
less reliable and more importantly inexpensive, so that you can
have lots of them so that you have backup. So
in the background, these companies can replace broken or damage
systems with newer ones. They can migrate copies of information
onto new machines or existing machines, keep things going smoothly,
and the customers never noticed an issue. Now there is
(30:53):
a caveat there which I will get to after we
come back from this break. So before the break, I
alluded to a caveat about you know, having these indefinitely
resilient data storage systems using the cloud, and that is
(31:16):
I said at the beginning, assuming the company providing the
storage remains strong. So we have to remember that much
of cloud storage out there is resting in these few
big companies, and they are really big and thus pretty
resilient to change into going out of business, but they're
not immune to it. Even companies like Amazon, Microsoft and
(31:39):
Google have their vulnerabilities, and in fact, we're seeing increased
pressure from around the world to break some of these
companies up because they are so dominant in their respective spaces.
So the odds of these companies going out of business
are really really low, but they're not zero, or at
least it's not zero that they won't be split up,
(32:02):
and that ultimately that could lead to discontinuation of services
in some areas. So we have to remember that the
access to this information remains dependent upon these various companies
staying in business and being capable of providing that service,
so it's never a guarantee. So even the stuff that's
(32:22):
saved in the cloud isn't necessarily permanent. It's probably it's
probably in better shape than say, something that's saved on
a magnet are magnetized tape that you keep in your
your neodyne magnet room. It's going to be better than that,
but it's not bulletproof. There are several other methods for
(32:44):
storing information as well, including some that are, you know,
fairly new. But the point remains our ability to hold
onto knowledge depends upon the media we use uh and
the machinery we used to access that media. And if
we do not consistently information to new storage methods, we
run the risk of losing the older information. UH. And
(33:08):
I'll come back to that at the very end, But
let's switch gears for a second, because sometimes we want
to get rid of information. Sometimes we need to wipe
some storage, you know, maybe we need to make room
for something new. Anyone who's had a gaming PC, you've
probably at some point said, all right, well, I gotta
install a couple of these titles so that I can
(33:28):
install the newest game I want to play. Or maybe
we want to just get rid of something we no
longer need or use, or maybe we need to get
rid of something because we don't want someone else to
see it. For example, let's say that you've upgraded to
a brand new computer and you want to sell your
old computer, or you're gonna donate it to like a
school or something, or maybe you just want to recycle it. Well,
(33:51):
chances are before you do that, you're going to want
to wipe that computer clear of information first. If there's
anything personal on computer, you probably don't want it falling
into someone else's hands. Like let's say you get some
financial or medical information that was stored somewhere on that machine,
you definitely want to get that wiped off before you
(34:13):
hand it over to someone else. Well, what happens when
you delete data, Well, if you're using a computer and
you're moving files to the recycled bin, that doesn't actually
mean that the files are gone. Even emptying the recycled
bin doesn't necessarily mean the files are gone. What it
means is that the computer has essentially designated the respective
(34:33):
parts on the storage system holding those files as being
available for new information. So like the markers that would
designate that as being a file or gone, but the
file itself, the information of the file itself is still there.
But then When it's time for you to save new
information to your computer, some of that new information might
(34:55):
be overwritten on top of the older files that you
quote unquote de eated. So over time you will slowly
eradicate the information of that deleted file as your computer
rights new information to those segments. But it's not instantaneous.
And the important thing to remember is that deleting a
file doesn't mean the file is gone. It's not enough
(35:18):
to just delete a file. Many operating systems include options
to let you permanently delete files, and this option typically
just involves overwriting the selected deleted files with information, usually
garbage data that doesn't actually mean anything. The original file
is gone and it's replaced with gibberish. But let's say
(35:40):
you have to be absolutely certain that no one will
ever retrieve information from your hard drive. Maybe this computer
held crucial financial information for an important company, or maybe
it held medical information for lots of people, and say
like a hospital, and it's time for you to downgrade
the system and get rid of it. Well, you're gonna
(36:00):
really want to make sure that that machine is wiped clear.
So then you might want to engage in what I
would like to think of as the nuclear option. It's
called the Gutman method, so Peter Gutman and Colin Plum
came up with this process in the nineties. It involves
overwriting a disk drive with gibberish thirty five times, using
(36:23):
different patterns, including some that are not patterns but random passes.
So there's no pattern at all. It's just a random
overright pass followed by a whole bunch of patterned overrites
followed by more random passes. Uh. And this is because
even with your standard gibberish overwrite, it can still be
possible for a determined person with the right tools to
(36:43):
retrieve at least some information off of a hard drive. UM.
This is because of that magnetic storage. We're talking about
the hard disk drive era here, so we're really talking
about looking for faint traces of magnetic imprints that could
suggest what the original data saved on that hard disk
(37:04):
drive was. Even by overwriting, those faint traces might remain.
So this was Gutman's way of just obliterating any trace
of what was there originally. So you really got to
go to extremes, or at least you used to, because
Gutman and Plumb were really concerned about that magnetic issue.
(37:25):
These days, most experts suggest that the Gutman method is
really overkill, especially if you're using a solid state drive,
and that after three passes you're usually in pretty reliable
shape and you don't have to worry about someone getting
access to your information. There are also several software packages
on the market that can go through the process of
deleting files permanently, usually using some form of multi pass
(37:49):
overwrite patterns multi pass meaning going over the entire storage drive,
not like Lulu Dallas multi pass. Sometimes folks go to
even further extremes, such as using powerful magnets to destroy
you know, magnetic storage that happens where you know you're
(38:10):
that will be part of the process. Some will even
use shredders to destroy like hard disc platters and such,
so that not only have the files been thoroughly deleted
and overwritten, but the physical media itself has been physically destroyed.
That's probably over a kill for most of us, unless
you go by a three number designation like double oh
(38:31):
nine or something. But it really is interesting to me
that information can simultaneously be challenging to preserve and difficult
to get rid of. But we're also talking about different
time scales here, right, it's not apples to apples for preservation,
We're really concerned about the long haul. How can we
keep information accessible even as the way we generate, store,
(38:54):
and retrieve information changes. How can we ensure that future
generations will have access to the information that's at our
disposal today. There are so many offshoots of this as well.
For example, the desire to preserve old information is what
drove the creators of the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator software
(39:18):
or MAIM to do what they do. They wanted to
create a way to preserve code that otherwise could fade
into obscurity because these old arcade machines were physically coded
onto chips that were part of these arcade cabinets, and
over time more of those cabinets end up being destroyed
or they become inoperable, and so this was an attempt
(39:41):
to create a system that would preserve that code, to
make it playable, not necessarily for people to play, but
again to preserve the code itself, otherwise it would be lost.
And as for destroying information, well that tends to be
for short term requirements, right, Uh, if there's nothing that's
threatening us or our information, Well, we could just play
(40:04):
the waiting game, depending on how we've stored the information
in the first place, because sooner or later the medium
that the information is on will deteriorate or it'll go obsolete,
and no one will be able to get the information anyway,
including you. So if you don't, if you're not in
a rush, you could just wait and the information will
eventually no longer be accessible. Now related to these concepts,
(40:28):
by the way, is the challenge of figuring out how
to future proof messaging so that people far into the
future will understand what those messages mean. Let's think back
to the Egyptian example. Without the Rosetta stone, we would
have no way of knowing what the higher glyphs mean.
Not for sure, we could have a lot of hypotheses,
but we wouldn't be able to really test them improve
(40:51):
that our hypothesis is accurate. So let's take an example.
Let's take the problem of nuclear waste from nuclear power facilities.
So some nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years,
and we have to store it. We have to put
it someplace where it's out of the way and safe.
(41:12):
And it also means that any warnings that we put
up at nuclear waste storage facilities really needs to be
easy for future generations to interpret, even if they have
lost all other records of what that site is. So
the signage needs to convey displace is dangerous. But then,
as that hieroglyphs example showed us, this is easier said
(41:35):
than done. We might do something that to us seems
completely obvious, but there's no way of knowing that people
ten thousand years from now will still understand it. There
are experts who work hard to create iconography and messaging
that someone unfamiliar with our current alphabet and language and
symbols might understand. So for a really awesome treatment of
(41:59):
this top I highly recommend a classic episode of Invisible,
a phenomenal show. If you've never listened to it, you
definitely need to. It is It is one of the
best podcasts I've ever listened to. But this particular one
comes from way back when it was like two thousand
fourteen when it published, and it is titled ten thousand Years.
(42:22):
Really a great, great episode, You should check that out.
It's an incredible treatment of the challenge of how do
you convey information to people that you you there's no
way for us to know anything about them, and keeping
in mind, like we're talking ten thousand years, because nuclear
waste can stay dangerous that long. You go back ten
(42:43):
thousand years and you suddenly think, wow, Yeah, creating a
message that would be readable ten tho years from now
that is going to be super challenging to do so. Yeah.
Storing data, retrieving data, destroying data, all of these things
have their own challenges and obstacles in front of them.
It's important for us to think about because it's also
(43:05):
important for us to take steps to preserve things when
we can. Um there are other great examples we can use.
One I would point out is that a lot of people,
particularly in my generation, we used stuff like Facebook to
become kind of the storage center for photographs, right, Like,
(43:27):
I have hundreds of photos stored on Facebook. But then
I decided to piece out of Facebook. So I needed
to download my Facebook information because otherwise I was going
to lose access to all those pictures that I had stored.
And it was just a kind of thing I had
taken for granted that I would always be on Facebook
(43:48):
and I would always have access to those images, and
now I don't, And so it's it's it's again. An
example of things that we have to keep in mind
when we choose a orange method is that we should
also occasionally think of ways to my great information to
a new storage method to make certain that we don't
(44:10):
lose what came before. All right, I hope you enjoyed
this episode about the paradoxical nature of information in the
digital age. If you have suggestions for topics I should
cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out
to me. The best way to do that is on Twitter.
The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
(44:32):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with I Heart Radio and
how the tech are yet. You know, I thought it
might be interesting to talk about how data can both
be easy to lose and hard to lose. It's a paradox,
(00:29):
but really this is all about the media upon which
we store data and how that media can pose various challenges. Now,
first up, let's just talk about the concept of obsolescence.
So as our technology, our language, our culture, as all
these things evolve and we discover new ways to commit
(00:53):
information to different types of media, we often leave the
older methods behind. For example, very few people are recording
audio to wax cylinders today. For example, you know, Thomas
Edison did it, but you don't see people doing it now,
at least not outside of you know, historical demonstrations and
that sort of thing. The days of storing info magnetically
(01:16):
onto strips of metal, like we saw at the end
of the nineteenth century, that's pretty far behind us too,
although magnetic tape is built on the same principle. But
before we use tape, we used wire um, not that frequently,
but it was one of those things that kind of
paved the way toward magnetic tape. Now, over time, all
(01:37):
media will ultimately go obsolete, either because the stuff we
recorded upon has worn out, the actual physical stuff has broken,
or because we've lost the ability to retrieve information from
that type of media. And that inability to retrieve can
range from the technical to just our knowledge of how
(01:58):
to do it. So let's take a moment to consider
something that is pretty far removed from modern technology unless
you watch stargate, and that is hieroglyphs. So thousands of
years ago, the people of ancient Egypt developed a writing
system that was complicated, to say the least. So our
(02:19):
Latin alphabet, the one that we use in in English,
for example, has twenty six characters, right, twenty six letters
in the alphabet, and hieroglyphs had hundreds of characters, like
a thousand or more. Now, some of the characters in
ancient Egypt represented basic phonemes. Phonemes are sounds within a language, right,
(02:44):
like would be a phoneme or like these are basic sounds.
But other characters in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs they represented entire words,
or at least parts of words. Uh. Some represented still bles,
so not necessarily parts of words like you would think,
(03:05):
but a syllable that was common in ancient Egypt. But
over the millennia, the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs
faded from Egyptian culture. There were a lot of reasons
for this, I mean, the the style of writing down
information changed from hieroglyphs to like demonic writing, and beyond also,
(03:26):
you had folks like you know, Europeans, like Greeks and
Romans who were invading Egypt and changing things and disrupting
Egyptian culture significantly. By the time we got a few
centuries into the common era, pretty much no one knew
how to read the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt anymore. So
we had all this knowledge stored in various places and
(03:50):
no way to retrieve that knowledge. It appeared as though
we had lost all of it, or that we had,
due to some misconceptions, completely miss interpreted that knowledge. So
by the time we got into the medieval era, there
was this prevailing hypothesis that the Egyptian hieroglyphs were symbolic
(04:11):
in meaning and by that I mean that the images
that the Egyptians used were thought of to be direct
symbols of whatever the message was. So let's say you
had images of a boat and a snake, then you
might be led to think that what you're looking at
must be an allegorical story about snakes on a boat,
possibly starring Samuel L. Jackson. But no, the symbols used
(04:36):
weren't meant to represent exactly what they looked like. They
represented elements of a language. So for example, if you
want to understand what I'm saying, our letter S looks
kind of like a snake, right, but it doesn't mean snake.
When you see the letter S, that doesn't mean snake. Uh.
It could be the beginning of the word snake. Obviously
(04:58):
that begins with S, but it could mean anything. It
represents the S sound, which is found in lots of words,
not just snake. And the hieroglyphs were similar, but no
one had a document that matched hieroglyphs to some other
known language so that someone could actually decipher the symbols.
So it just seemed to be, you know, all these
(05:19):
icons that the meaning had been completely lost. But then
came Napoleon Bonaparte and his armies invaded Egypt toward the
end of the eighteenth century, and in the process the
armies happened across something incredibly important, and it would later
be called the Rosetta Stone. Now, the Rosetta Stone itself
(05:41):
is a type of monument, and there are carvings on
the monument that represent an official dynastic decree. The carvings
are in three different written languages. So at the base
of the monument you have the carving in ancient Greek,
above that is Demotic, that is an Egyptian language that
(06:01):
followed the hieroglyphic language, and at the top are hieroglyphs.
And since all three carvings represented the same decree, this
gave experts the opportunity to finally begin deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs,
and so began the long process of uncovering lost knowledge.
And this was helped by subsequent discoveries of similar decrees,
(06:25):
so that we over time we're able to understand what
these these hieroglyphs actually stood for. We understood that it
was a written language that wasn't just purely symbolic. Now,
my point in telling the story is that we have
to remind ourselves that while we have ways to record knowledge,
(06:45):
it would be foolish for us to assume that any
way that we use is permanent, because we've got plenty
of examples of knowledge being lost in the past, whether
it's because people forgot how to access that knowledge, or
maybe the knowledge was based in folklore and the people
that were the stewards of that knowledge were wiped out
(07:07):
or assimilated and the knowledge was lost, or maybe the
physical copies, if it was like a written language, maybe
the physical copies were lost. And shout out to the
late Great Library of Alexandria, which I should add kind
of faded away, not just because of the famous fire
set by Julius Caesar's forces, though that clearly was a
(07:28):
catastrophic event, but also there was a long period in
which leaders were cracking down on scholars because well, a
little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so a lot of
knowledge has got to be absolutely deadly right. But anyway,
let's skip ahead to the modern era. So even today
we run the risk of losing access to information because
(07:50):
we no longer make the stuff, what plays the media
that we used in the old days, or at least
in many cases, it is getting really tricky to track
down the components that can retrieve data from those types
of media. Right, you might be able to find old
working equipment that can access certain types of stuff that
(08:10):
otherwise we no longer can access, but it's it's rare
that you're gonna find someone make a new version of that.
It's not impossible. It's not like we've lost all ability
to It's just that unless there is a pressing financial
benefit to creating that kind of stuff, no one's gonna
bother to do it. Because you know, it's expensive to
(08:33):
produce older types of of technologies, and unless there's a
financial incentive, no one's gonna do it. Um, it's sad
to say so. There's also the danger that the media
we rely upon could wear out and deteriorate over time. So,
for example, let's consider celluloid or film. Cinematic film degrades
(08:56):
over time, particularly if it's in a hot and moist environment.
And you might have heard about some filmmakers storing prints
of their movies or masters of their movies in old
salt mines such as the one that's below Hutchinson, Kansas
in the United States. These subterranean spaces maintain a constant
(09:18):
temperature of around sixty eight fahrenheit or twenty celsius, and
they have a low humidity somewhere between like forty humidity.
Of course, movies are not the only thing stored in
those minds that in fact, we got the idea because
of the story of the monument men who ended up
finding lots of stolen art from various parts of Europe
(09:42):
that the Nazis had collected and stored in salt mines.
We ended up kind of using the same idea. So,
because it's a great way to preserve stuff, if you
otherwise it's in danger of deterioration. Also, we have to
acknowledge that while it's a great way to preserve stuff,
there's a tragedy year because we're also removing it right
from us. You know, we're storing it and we're preserving it,
(10:06):
but to what end if you can't access it, then
it doesn't really like there's a lot of questions. There
are philosophical questions. If you have a priceless work of
art stored an assault mine and no one can go there,
is it the same as not having it at all?
Now in the case of film. A lot of studios
will actually use those master recordings when they want to
(10:29):
do a remastered version of the film they want to
release it on, say like Blu ray or something, they'll
go to the the original print that's stored in a
salt mine and they'll pull from that. But yeah, there's
lots of other stuff besides just film down there, anything
that needs a controlled environment in order to stop or
at least slow deterioration. Now, magnetic tape is another important
(10:52):
storage method, and we've been using magnetic tape as storage
since the mid twenty century, around nine or so, and
again the basic principle behind it dates back to the
late nineteenth century. That was when we were using magnetic wire.
But whether it's real to real tape, or cassettes or
(11:13):
VHS tapes, we've relied on this methodology to store all
sorts of information, from you know, computer information to music
in the case of like the cassette tapes of the
eighties nineties or the VHS video tapes, all sorts of
info we have committed to magnetic tape, and a lot
(11:34):
of companies still rely on magnetic tape for long term
storage and backups. When I use long term storage. I'm
speaking relatively, as we will see now, some older forms
of magnetic tape are largely obsolete because the devices we'd
use to read the data from them are out of production.
You might find a working device here or there, but
(11:56):
they can be pretty rare, and being mechanical in nature,
they will eventually require maintenance or they'll stop working. And
when you're talking about this kind of stuff, often you're
talking about things that have parts that no one's making anymore.
So it becomes very challenging to keep them in good
working order because there's a limited supply of components you
can use to make replacements when something breaks down. On
(12:19):
top of all that, magnetic information itself can degrade over time,
actually can degrade really quickly if it's in the presence
of a strong magnetic field, which is why as a
kid I was told never to bring a magnet close
to a computer or computer disks because you could actually
uh corrupt information that's stored on those those devices, because
(12:41):
the magnet would realign the magnetic components that were on
this plastic film or in the case of a computer,
uh arraid on a platter inside the hard disk drive. Now,
on average if stored in decent conditions, magnetic tape typically
will retained data from anywhere between ten to twenty years.
(13:03):
When stored in prime conditions like in that salt mine,
for example, you might stretch it to around thirty years.
So magnetic tape can hold onto data for a while,
but certainly not indefinitely. It will sooner or later degrade
to a point where the the information will be corrupted
or irretrievable. Now, on a similar note, let's talk floppy disks.
(13:28):
So when I was a kid, our Apple to E
computer had a five and a quarter inch floppy disk drive.
These were not the first floppy discs. There were older ones.
There were larger ones. IBM created eight inch floppy disks
for example, And the disks that I was familiar with
back when I was using the Apple to E were
these plastic envelopes, and the envelopes were covering a disc
(13:51):
of magnetic film on the inside, and it was on
this magnetic disc that you could save and retreat data.
And I actually had to look this up because I
could not remember it myself, but the original five and
a quarter inch floppy disks could hold up to nine
bytes of data. That's when they were first created, so
(14:12):
that's just ninety kilobytes. But over time, you know, engineers
improved the technology. They increased the capacity of floppy disks. Typically,
they did this by creating more precise read write heads
so they could store data in smaller physical sizes, which
meant you could cram more of it onto the same
(14:34):
sized disc. They also figured out how to multilayer discs,
so that increased storage as well. I think, you know,
some disks maxed out at around so significantly more than
ninety but still weigh less than what we use today.
Now I'm gonna talk more about floppy disks and other
(14:54):
forms of storage and why all these different types kind
of a limited shelf life of one span or another.
But before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
we're back, and we were talking about floppy discs. Well,
(15:17):
my parents write novels, and so my dad's first books,
which were written in the early eighties, they were written
on that old Apple to E computer, and he would
save chapters of his books too floppy disks. Each novel
would take up several discs, like I don't know, around
a dozen or so. I can't quite remember I remember
we had disc holders that would hold like maybe three
(15:41):
of his novels, because that's how many discs would be
taken up just by you know, storing chapters onto them.
I'm not sure if he actually still owns those floppy discs,
but I imagine that even if he does, he doesn't
have any way to check and see if the data
is still there or not. He would need an Apple
to E or an emulator to simulate an Apple to
(16:03):
E on another machine. Plus he would have to have
a floppy disk drive connected to whatever computer he was
using in order to try and read those disks. And
floppy disk drives are not completely gone. They you can
still find them. They are increasingly rare, however, so it's
easy to imagine that a day will come when anything
(16:24):
stored on disks like that, like my dad's books, will
just become lost simply because no one makes the stuff
capable of reading it anymore. And the stuff that already
exists will eventually break down. Um and you know, the
the actual magnetic information on the discs will degrade over
(16:45):
time to just like with magnetic tape. The eventually you'll
you'll have some of those magnetic particles move out of alignment.
That's going to corrupt your data. I know, I keep
saying data and data. I know I do that. I
don't know why do that, and I can't predict when
it happens. It just does. I apologize for it though,
because I know it drives some of you crazy, and
(17:06):
my apologies. It just happens anyway, Those particles will move
out of alignment, the information gets corrupted. So yeah, switch
to information there, and then you can't retrieve it anymore.
So that can happen to even if you have a
working computer system that could theoretically pull that information off
the disk. Sometimes the information on the disc itself will
(17:26):
become corrupt. Now, we also have to keep in mind
that media that we still use today because hardly. I mean,
people do still use floppy disks depending on the situation,
but it's pretty rare. But even the stuff that we
do use today, eventually that's gonna become obsolete too. Just
a few years ago, compact discs were the go to
for data storage, at least for personal computers, though a
(17:48):
lot of enterprises would continue to rely on magnetic tape
for more long term backups, and compact discs are a
type of optical storage, meaning that rather than using magnetism
to align tiny particles on a physical surface, we're using
lasers to write and to read from these disks. UH,
(18:10):
the information is stored in water called pits and lands,
pits being designated pit in the surface, and lands being
the spaces between PITSU. The rewriteable CD is actually kind
of use foggy and clear UH sections that are very
very tiny. You wouldn't be able to see them with
the naked eye. Now, compact discs allow us to create
(18:32):
a more dense storage system, so we could put way
more information on a single CD than we could with
stuff like floppy disks. Now, unlike cassettes and floppy disks,
optical discs are not affected by magnetism. So if you
did bring a powerful magnet close to a bunch of
floppy disks or cassette tapes or anything that uses magnetic storage,
(18:53):
you would scramble the information on there because the powerful
magnet would realign the magnetic particles that are on the tape.
But optical discs don't have magnetic particles, so they would
be immune to that kind of interference. However, this does
not mean that optical discs last forever, so the there
(19:14):
are many layers on a compact disc. Same thing with
DVDs and blue race, by the way, there are several
layers involved, and these layers can have chemical reactions in them,
and those chemical reactions can cause those layers to degrade
over time. So like a CD that's stored in a
very humid and warm place, like if people had stored
(19:37):
their CDs, their music CDs inside their car in the
summer and Georgia, they might find that those CDs don't
last that long, like they might last a few seasons,
but eventually they degrade and they you know, if you're
in a hot and humid environment, then disc is going
to degrade faster, not like instantaneously, but it will start
(19:59):
to degrade faster than it would if you stored it
in a cooler, dry place. And that outer layer on
a CD, that's the clear layer, right, it's protective and
it's clear so that a laser can go through it.
But sometimes that clear layer can start to rot away
and it can leave the reflective layer that's underneath it exposed.
(20:21):
And with some CDs, that reflective layer is made up
of a silver or sometimes a silver compound and silver
when exposed to air will tarnish. The tarnished silver won't
reflect a laser properly, and so you start to get
errors when you're trying to read information off of that
kind of c D. Now, not all CDs were made
(20:43):
that way, right, so only some CDs have this particular
bronzing issue. In fact, our research group determined that the
c ds that really have this specific problem we're all
pressed in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, between the year's nineteen eight
and nineteen nine D three. That's pretty darn specific. Now.
(21:04):
The issue here, though, is that there's really no way
to give an average lifespan for a compact disc because
there's no such thing as an average compact discs. There
were there were so many different manufacturing and pressing processes
and recording processes that different ones could last a different
(21:25):
you know, theoretical maximum amount of time. So we can't
really answer the question how long on average will a
s c D last. I've seen a lot of people
suggest five to ten years, some people saying ten to twenty,
some people going as far as fifty. I think it
really depends on the way the CD was made and
what storage facility it's in, Like, is it in a
(21:47):
house where it's kept out of sunlight because UV radiation
can affect c D suh. Is it kept cool and dry,
then it's gonna last longer. Is it not handled a lot?
Like if it's your favorite music CD and you handle
it a lot, then it's gonna degrade faster. Again, not instantaneously,
(22:07):
and it may not even be noticeable at first, but
eventually you might get the things where it starts to
skip on a certain track, or it won't even play
certain tracks. That will happen over time. It's a similar
story for other optical formats, which include you know, DVDs
and Blu ray discs. These two have a limited lifespan,
though that lifespan may stretch to as long as a
(22:30):
century under ideal conditions. In a century is a long
time for a single person, right, I mean, that's that's
a significant amount of time. However, if we step outside
of a humans lifespan and we look at it from
the perspective of, you know, a historical account, then a
hundred years is not long at all. I mean, imagine
(22:53):
for a moment, if you had no access to any
information that was recorded before nineteen twenty because all the
media that we had used to record info on had
fallen apart or was otherwise unusable or inaccessible, that nothing
before nineteen twenty two would be knowable apart from what
(23:14):
people wrote about those times post nineteen two. That would
be crazy, right, But that's the kind of situation we're
in when we start looking at digital information. All right, Well,
what about we look at like hard drives, hard disk
drives and solid state drives, you know, the stuff that's
in your computer systems, your smartphones, that kind of thing.
(23:37):
What what do they have? You know, how long will
information last in those? Well, they stored information in different ways.
Hard disk drives have one or more platters in them,
and each platter has a magnetic coding on it upon
which information can be stored. So, just like cassettes and
(23:57):
floppy disks and other magnetic storage methods, hard disk drives
can be affected by powerful magnetic fields because they too,
store information magnetically. Hard disk drives have moving parts, so
the platters spin quite quite quickly in fact, and an
actuator mechanical arm with a ReadWrite quote unquote head on it.
(24:20):
This is the bit that either can read the magnetic
particles that are stored on a platter, or it can
actually exert a magnetic field that aligns the particles. When
you're writing information on the platter, it moves across the
platter and it starts to retrieve or right information to
the disc itself. And because we're talking about moving parts here,
(24:45):
stuff can and does wear down over time and use.
If it gets a lot of use, it wears out
more quickly. Also, it means that you should be gentle
when you're moving anything that happens to have a hard
disk drive inside of it, because a good whack and
damage the delicate parts. If you knock that actuator arm
out of alignment, that's a big problem. It's it's going
(25:07):
to be impossible to read or write stuff reliably to
that hard disk drive. Now, hard drives don't tend to
last very long because of those mechanical parts. I've seen
estimates of the lifespan for hard disk drives lasting somewhere
between three two maybe six and a half years, seven years.
(25:28):
Some give it a little bit longer, some a little
bit shorter. Of course, a hard disk drive can last
longer than a decade, but that's you know, if we're
looking at typical use and we're looking at the average
lifespan of hard disk drives, we tend to fall on
that three to seven year range. So your mileage may vary.
(25:49):
It may depend upon how you use your hard disk
drive and the setting that you're in. So they will
eventually break down. Also, even if they don't down sooner
or later, really later, that magnetic information will start to
move out of alignment just naturally. And so even if
(26:10):
you were to preserve a hard disk drive perfectly and
come back to it in a century, chances are a
lot of the information would no longer be accessible because
the actual magnetic particles would no longer be in the
proper alignment. Solid state drives store information in a totally
different way from hard disk drives, So instead of aligning
(26:32):
magnetic particles, and ss D stores information through flash memory
similar to USB sticks and other types of flash drives.
These drives store information using nanned flash that's in a
n D and that in turn is composed of what
are called floating gate transistors. And all of this gets
(26:53):
super technical, but let's just kind of imagine it this way.
Each floating gate can be either charged, which means it's
a zero, or it could be non charged, which means
it's a one. So it gets a little bit confusing
because we often think of binary with zero being off
and one being on. But in this case, zero means
that there is a charge in a cell and one
(27:15):
means there is no charge in that cell, and a
drive is made up of a grid of these cells.
So USB flash drives and s s d s are
non volatile memory. That means that they retain information even
if they are not receiving power. Right, So, if you
were to turn off your computer and it has an
SSD drive in it, you didn't just wipe out everything
(27:38):
that was stored on that SSD. It remains there. However,
if an S s D goes without power for an
extended period, so we're talking like five to ten years here,
it can experience what is called bit rot That is,
some of those charged gates might lose their charge without
access to power, and over time the information degrades. So
(28:02):
s s d s are not immune to deterioration either.
You know, given enough time, the information on those will
be corrupted as well. Without any other external forces being
applied to the S s D s well, what about
cloud storage, because that's changed everything, right. I mean, there's
so much of the information that we use day to
(28:23):
day that isn't even stored on our our native device
at all, or what is stored in our native devices
a temporary representation of that file. The actual file lives
in the cloud. Well, assuming that the company that's providing
the storage remains strong, data stored in the cloud tends
(28:44):
to be pretty darn resilient. And that's because in order
to provide a reputable cloud storage service, or really any
cloud service, companies have to ensure redundancy. Now, that just
means that any information that's stored to the cloud system
has to be stored on multiple machines, because remember, cloud
(29:05):
just means someone else's computer. That's really what the cloud is.
When you're storing stuff in the cloud, it's not like
just floating around in the Internet. It's being stored on
servers that are part of some massive data server farm
that are owned by some even more massive company like
(29:25):
Amazon or Microsoft or Google. Now, the reason why these
companies store the information on multiple machines is that should
a single machine holding information malfunctions or I don't know,
it goes on fire, or something. There are backups on
other machines, so the customer ideally never even notices that
(29:50):
there's any problem. There's no interruption of service, there's no delay,
their information is still on quote unquote the cloud, when
really it's on multiple machines. So this is important because
most of these data server farm places, they're using really
cheap components, like lots of them, but they're inexpensive and
(30:10):
it's you know, it's just off the shelf inexpensive components
to store all this information or to run processes. Uh.
That's what allows them to have this kind of redundancy
because they're not spending ridiculous amounts of money to get
state of the art machines in there. They don't need that.
They just need machines that are you know, more or
(30:31):
less reliable and more importantly inexpensive, so that you can
have lots of them so that you have backup. So
in the background, these companies can replace broken or damage
systems with newer ones. They can migrate copies of information
onto new machines or existing machines, keep things going smoothly,
and the customers never noticed an issue. Now there is
(30:53):
a caveat there which I will get to after we
come back from this break. So before the break, I
alluded to a caveat about you know, having these indefinitely
resilient data storage systems using the cloud, and that is
(31:16):
I said at the beginning, assuming the company providing the
storage remains strong. So we have to remember that much
of cloud storage out there is resting in these few
big companies, and they are really big and thus pretty
resilient to change into going out of business, but they're
not immune to it. Even companies like Amazon, Microsoft and
(31:39):
Google have their vulnerabilities, and in fact, we're seeing increased
pressure from around the world to break some of these
companies up because they are so dominant in their respective spaces.
So the odds of these companies going out of business
are really really low, but they're not zero, or at
least it's not zero that they won't be split up,
(32:02):
and that ultimately that could lead to discontinuation of services
in some areas. So we have to remember that the
access to this information remains dependent upon these various companies
staying in business and being capable of providing that service,
so it's never a guarantee. So even the stuff that's
(32:22):
saved in the cloud isn't necessarily permanent. It's probably it's
probably in better shape than say, something that's saved on
a magnet are magnetized tape that you keep in your
your neodyne magnet room. It's going to be better than that,
but it's not bulletproof. There are several other methods for
(32:44):
storing information as well, including some that are, you know,
fairly new. But the point remains our ability to hold
onto knowledge depends upon the media we use uh and
the machinery we used to access that media. And if
we do not consistently information to new storage methods, we
run the risk of losing the older information. UH. And
(33:08):
I'll come back to that at the very end, But
let's switch gears for a second, because sometimes we want
to get rid of information. Sometimes we need to wipe
some storage, you know, maybe we need to make room
for something new. Anyone who's had a gaming PC, you've
probably at some point said, all right, well, I gotta
install a couple of these titles so that I can
(33:28):
install the newest game I want to play. Or maybe
we want to just get rid of something we no
longer need or use, or maybe we need to get
rid of something because we don't want someone else to
see it. For example, let's say that you've upgraded to
a brand new computer and you want to sell your
old computer, or you're gonna donate it to like a
school or something, or maybe you just want to recycle it. Well,
(33:51):
chances are before you do that, you're going to want
to wipe that computer clear of information first. If there's
anything personal on computer, you probably don't want it falling
into someone else's hands. Like let's say you get some
financial or medical information that was stored somewhere on that machine,
you definitely want to get that wiped off before you
(34:13):
hand it over to someone else. Well, what happens when
you delete data, Well, if you're using a computer and
you're moving files to the recycled bin, that doesn't actually
mean that the files are gone. Even emptying the recycled
bin doesn't necessarily mean the files are gone. What it
means is that the computer has essentially designated the respective
(34:33):
parts on the storage system holding those files as being
available for new information. So like the markers that would
designate that as being a file or gone, but the
file itself, the information of the file itself is still there.
But then When it's time for you to save new
information to your computer, some of that new information might
(34:55):
be overwritten on top of the older files that you
quote unquote de eated. So over time you will slowly
eradicate the information of that deleted file as your computer
rights new information to those segments. But it's not instantaneous.
And the important thing to remember is that deleting a
file doesn't mean the file is gone. It's not enough
(35:18):
to just delete a file. Many operating systems include options
to let you permanently delete files, and this option typically
just involves overwriting the selected deleted files with information, usually
garbage data that doesn't actually mean anything. The original file
is gone and it's replaced with gibberish. But let's say
(35:40):
you have to be absolutely certain that no one will
ever retrieve information from your hard drive. Maybe this computer
held crucial financial information for an important company, or maybe
it held medical information for lots of people, and say
like a hospital, and it's time for you to downgrade
the system and get rid of it. Well, you're gonna
(36:00):
really want to make sure that that machine is wiped clear.
So then you might want to engage in what I
would like to think of as the nuclear option. It's
called the Gutman method, so Peter Gutman and Colin Plum
came up with this process in the nineties. It involves
overwriting a disk drive with gibberish thirty five times, using
(36:23):
different patterns, including some that are not patterns but random passes.
So there's no pattern at all. It's just a random
overright pass followed by a whole bunch of patterned overrites
followed by more random passes. Uh. And this is because
even with your standard gibberish overwrite, it can still be
possible for a determined person with the right tools to
(36:43):
retrieve at least some information off of a hard drive. UM.
This is because of that magnetic storage. We're talking about
the hard disk drive era here, so we're really talking
about looking for faint traces of magnetic imprints that could
suggest what the original data saved on that hard disk
(37:04):
drive was. Even by overwriting, those faint traces might remain.
So this was Gutman's way of just obliterating any trace
of what was there originally. So you really got to
go to extremes, or at least you used to, because
Gutman and Plumb were really concerned about that magnetic issue.
(37:25):
These days, most experts suggest that the Gutman method is
really overkill, especially if you're using a solid state drive,
and that after three passes you're usually in pretty reliable
shape and you don't have to worry about someone getting
access to your information. There are also several software packages
on the market that can go through the process of
deleting files permanently, usually using some form of multi pass
(37:49):
overwrite patterns multi pass meaning going over the entire storage drive,
not like Lulu Dallas multi pass. Sometimes folks go to
even further extremes, such as using powerful magnets to destroy
you know, magnetic storage that happens where you know you're
(38:10):
that will be part of the process. Some will even
use shredders to destroy like hard disc platters and such,
so that not only have the files been thoroughly deleted
and overwritten, but the physical media itself has been physically destroyed.
That's probably over a kill for most of us, unless
you go by a three number designation like double oh
(38:31):
nine or something. But it really is interesting to me
that information can simultaneously be challenging to preserve and difficult
to get rid of. But we're also talking about different
time scales here, right, it's not apples to apples for preservation,
We're really concerned about the long haul. How can we
keep information accessible even as the way we generate, store,
(38:54):
and retrieve information changes. How can we ensure that future
generations will have access to the information that's at our
disposal today. There are so many offshoots of this as well.
For example, the desire to preserve old information is what
drove the creators of the Multi Arcade Machine Emulator software
(39:18):
or MAIM to do what they do. They wanted to
create a way to preserve code that otherwise could fade
into obscurity because these old arcade machines were physically coded
onto chips that were part of these arcade cabinets, and
over time more of those cabinets end up being destroyed
or they become inoperable, and so this was an attempt
(39:41):
to create a system that would preserve that code, to
make it playable, not necessarily for people to play, but
again to preserve the code itself, otherwise it would be lost.
And as for destroying information, well that tends to be
for short term requirements, right, Uh, if there's nothing that's
threatening us or our information, Well, we could just play
(40:04):
the waiting game, depending on how we've stored the information
in the first place, because sooner or later the medium
that the information is on will deteriorate or it'll go obsolete,
and no one will be able to get the information anyway,
including you. So if you don't, if you're not in
a rush, you could just wait and the information will
eventually no longer be accessible. Now related to these concepts,
(40:28):
by the way, is the challenge of figuring out how
to future proof messaging so that people far into the
future will understand what those messages mean. Let's think back
to the Egyptian example. Without the Rosetta stone, we would
have no way of knowing what the higher glyphs mean.
Not for sure, we could have a lot of hypotheses,
but we wouldn't be able to really test them improve
(40:51):
that our hypothesis is accurate. So let's take an example.
Let's take the problem of nuclear waste from nuclear power facilities.
So some nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years,
and we have to store it. We have to put
it someplace where it's out of the way and safe.
(41:12):
And it also means that any warnings that we put
up at nuclear waste storage facilities really needs to be
easy for future generations to interpret, even if they have
lost all other records of what that site is. So
the signage needs to convey displace is dangerous. But then,
as that hieroglyphs example showed us, this is easier said
(41:35):
than done. We might do something that to us seems
completely obvious, but there's no way of knowing that people
ten thousand years from now will still understand it. There
are experts who work hard to create iconography and messaging
that someone unfamiliar with our current alphabet and language and
symbols might understand. So for a really awesome treatment of
(41:59):
this top I highly recommend a classic episode of Invisible,
a phenomenal show. If you've never listened to it, you
definitely need to. It is It is one of the
best podcasts I've ever listened to. But this particular one
comes from way back when it was like two thousand
fourteen when it published, and it is titled ten thousand Years.
(42:22):
Really a great, great episode, You should check that out.
It's an incredible treatment of the challenge of how do
you convey information to people that you you there's no
way for us to know anything about them, and keeping
in mind, like we're talking ten thousand years, because nuclear
waste can stay dangerous that long. You go back ten
(42:43):
thousand years and you suddenly think, wow, Yeah, creating a
message that would be readable ten tho years from now
that is going to be super challenging to do so. Yeah.
Storing data, retrieving data, destroying data, all of these things
have their own challenges and obstacles in front of them.
It's important for us to think about because it's also
(43:05):
important for us to take steps to preserve things when
we can. Um there are other great examples we can use.
One I would point out is that a lot of people,
particularly in my generation, we used stuff like Facebook to
become kind of the storage center for photographs, right, Like,
(43:27):
I have hundreds of photos stored on Facebook. But then
I decided to piece out of Facebook. So I needed
to download my Facebook information because otherwise I was going
to lose access to all those pictures that I had stored.
And it was just a kind of thing I had
taken for granted that I would always be on Facebook
(43:48):
and I would always have access to those images, and
now I don't, And so it's it's it's again. An
example of things that we have to keep in mind
when we choose a orange method is that we should
also occasionally think of ways to my great information to
a new storage method to make certain that we don't
(44:10):
lose what came before. All right, I hope you enjoyed
this episode about the paradoxical nature of information in the
digital age. If you have suggestions for topics I should
cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out
to me. The best way to do that is on Twitter.
The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
(44:32):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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