03.12.2002
Will I still need my data in 2059?
Upon looking up some specs for my hard drive the other day I noticed the excepted mean time between failures (MTBF) span for my drive was supposedly a grand total of 500,000 hours. "Wow, that sounds pretty high", I said. Upon doing the math:

500000 hours
/ 24 hrs/day
/ 365 days/year
----------------
57.077625570776255707762557077626 years!?!?!?

Now I have found drives to MAYBE last 5 years, 57 seemed a streach. Sure, the PCB on the drive will last that long, so will the casing, but the bearings would be shot by 10 years at the longest. Granted, this drive is a nice old slow 10gb running at 5400rpm, not one of those Speed Racers- 100+gb at 10,000rpm, but I am still having my doubts on it's terminal life span. Upon doing further research this number means almost nothing. According to some sources it is worthless. Basically it is a number of hours compiled on all of their test cases verses the failure occurances. Funny enough the "Component Design Life" was only 5 years which sounds much more reasonable. Bloody marketing.

On a seperate note you have got to think that this drive will be worth nothing in 57 years. What did we have 57 years ago? Punch cards? The start of magnetic tape data storage? UNIVAC project was about to be started. Elvis was 10. In 57 years from now we will be at brain mod chips, holographic everything and a life where no one is unwired (read the book A Dream Of Glass). Makes you anticipate the future and fear it all at the same time.

For all we know I will be some hermit by then, avoiding technology with my Photovoltaic panelsi (ok perhaps just low-tech), gravity feed water system and animal skins on me out in the back woods of Oregon. You never know.