Patent ID: 7711995

Claim:
A method for long term storage of digital information, the method comprising: storing the digital information on a first storage media, the first storage media being a write-once, read many (WORM) media; user-requested retrieval of digital information from the first storage media; retrieval of the digital information from the first storage media as forward copy of the digital information to a second WORM storage media; monitoring scans of the first storage media to obtain data of the incremental byte errors available for error correction at the time when each scan is made, wherein the monitoring scans include a first scan being carried out at startup of the first storage media, and then follow-on scans are conducted at intervals, the spacing of which is determined by evaluation of scan data history; plotting of the data of incremental byte errors from the scans versus the time in years to predict an end of life time estimation of the first storage media, wherein at the end of life time estimation of the first storage media is a point in time at which there is insufficient residual error correction capacity to correct errors in the digital information being retrieved from the first storage media; and, wherein a time span is selected, before the end of life time estimation, to forward copy the digital information to the second storage media so that sufficient residual error correction capacity of the first storage media exists to correct errors in digital information retrieved from the first storage media for forward copy of the digital information to the second storage media.