Digital preservation has been happening since the 1980s in the civilian world and probably for at least two decades before that in the military world.  The science of creating digital backups of data in order to prevent them from being lost is really as much an art as it is a science.  This is especially true if you consider what the first part of the digital preservation movement was like.

When computer hardware was new, there were many competing storage forms that came on in a relatively short period of time.  Five-inch floppy disks were replaced by 3.5-inch floppy disks which in their turn were replaced by CDs and eventually DVDs.  For each of these new storage methods, new hardware was needed.  Whereas the 5-inch standard might have been sold on all computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the fact of the matter is that if you want to read one of those today you need to buy an expensive piece of hardware in order to get the job done.

That being said, the obsolete nature of technology that used to plague people interested in digital preservation is starting to be dealt with in a way that is intelligent as hardware companies start to understand how their advances affect their clients.  A good example of this is the CD to DVD evolution which is comparable in industry terms to the 5-inch to 3.5-inch standard.  Although DVDs are likely going to replace CDs as long as data storage sizes become big enough on average, DVD players can still read CDs and will likely be able to read them for the foreseeable future.  This was not true of the older storage disks and it is becoming even truer for modern storage devices like external hard drives and flash drives, all of which tend to use the USB standard.

Although there are still risks involved with pinning yourself to one storage standard for digital preservation, they are becoming less important in the grand scheme of things.

If there is one thing that has really caused the explosion of digital preservation yet is something that nobody ever talks about, it would have to be the introduction of the universal serial bus standard.  The USB standard is one that is on every new computer sold.  You probably already know where the USB ports on your computer are because you typically use them today for plugging in your mouse and keyboard but they have a far more direct relationship with the increase in popularity of mass digital preservation.

The link has to do with what the USB port has done to storage devices.  Before the USB, devices like CD burners and DVD burners were expensive, bulky and really not conducive to helping with the mass digitization of data and information.  After the USB, storage devices that were fantastic for backing up information were produced and brought to the market every day.  These included devices like USB storage drives, external hard drives and everything else in between.

Why is this so important for digital preservation?  It is important because it eliminates one of the major concerns of digital preservation and that concern is obsolescence.  You can’t read about digital preservation without hearing unfortunate stories of people that backed up information on floppy disks and optical drives only to have those storage media go out of standard construction, making their data recovery process a very expensive one.  This is always a risk that you should take seriously in the computer world because it is a risk that has shown itself to be true again and again as new technology is developed.

The USB standard has changed that however because of the fact that you can now make external USB storage devices that can be plugged into the computer.  This makes exchanging parts cheaper and easier and also makes it more likely that products will continue to be created that conform to that standard for a very long time to come.