SanDisk's SD card can store data for 100 years
Found on Computerworld on Thursday, 24 June 2010
The card is designed for long-time preservation of crucial data like legal documents, medical files and forensic evidence, SanDisk said.
SanDisk determined the media's 100-year data-retention lifespan based on internal tests conducted at normal room temperatures.
Wait, now where have I heard this story before? Oh right, when the CD-R was hyped as the perfect storage medium. After a few years CD's were unreadable. Nothing but a PR stunt; completely useless in the real world. Even if the SD card doesn't suffer from anything like bitrot, there will be other problems. If you pick a random 30 year old file, it's most likely that today's computers can't handle the fileformat. That aside, even if the files stay intact and would be readable, chances are good that you cannot connect the device to future computers. Sony killed the 3.5" floppy disks after 29 years of existance; and many other interfaces have the same fate: ISA, PCI, IDE, COM, Centronics and so on. The data will be completely useless if you cannot access it. To avoid that, you need to move it onto a new medium and modern fileformat at least every decade, making a 100 year lifetime bascially useless.