All brands of Media Life expectancy in years. Archival quality microfilm has life of 300 years and parchment paper can last 500 years. Some of the digital technologies have a life from 30 to 50 years. These estimates are based on accelerated life testing only because this media type has not been around for very long. The mechanism of the loss of stored information may be due to one or more of the following causes.
Media becomes unreadable .
The media substrate and the active material may deteriorate. If this happens, not much can be done. An example is the destruction of nitrate-based films. Devices that read the media may not be available. Hardware obsolescence is rapid in computer industry.