Are there guidelines for how long a given type of media is considered stable?
From experience, hard drives seem safe on the order of years; I've spun drives back up from the early 2000s and they are fully intact. The lifespan of burned optical media is/was counted in minutes. Various flash memory is somewhere in between - I've had all kinda of cheap flash drives die.
Even with the multiple media forms they need to be refreshed at some frequency, and I don't know how often that should be.
From experience, hard drives seem safe on the order of years; I've spun drives back up from the early 2000s and they are fully intact. The lifespan of burned optical media is/was counted in minutes. Various flash memory is somewhere in between - I've had all kinda of cheap flash drives die.
Even with the multiple media forms they need to be refreshed at some frequency, and I don't know how often that should be.