"Digital information is at risk of being lost," say respondents to a recent study from the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

The study by SNIA's Data Management Forum and its 100 Year Archive Task Force looked at what type of data needs to be archived, how long it needs to be archived and the respondents' ability to store it long-term.

Results of the study, which was answered by 276 participants, showed that 80% of the respondents have data they must keep for over 50 years and 68% have data they must keep for at least 100 years.

Long-term digital information retention needs are real: 80% of respondents have information they must keep over 50 years, and 68% of respondents said they must keep this data more than 100 years.

Migrating this data among different physical media is also a tenable affair. Only 30% said they migrate data at regular intervals. And 70% said they doubt their ability to read retained information after 50 years.

E-mail archiving is also a problem area. Over 40% of respondents are keeping e-mails for longer than 10 years.

Survey respondents also said that database data is most at risk. (They should look to products from HP, which acquired OuterBay, and IBM, which just last week acquired Princeton Softech to solve this problem.)

Most respondents said that current means of archiving data are too manual, prone to error and costly.