A method and a system for the automated digital archiving of data comprises (1) a writing step in which data are subjected to a first algorithm producing an encoded file which is written into or onto a durable storage medium, preferably with an expected lifetime exceeding 50 years, in a machine-recognizable pattern with a predefined high density and (2) a reading step, in which the storage medium is scanned to obtain an image of the pattern, e.g. a raster graphic of the image, transferring the image to a memory, and storing it therein. Subsequently, by means of pattern recognition, the bits in the data pattern are identified, the value/sequence of these bits determined, and a bit stream for readout produced. The pattern produced in the writing step may encompass two parts, a first part comprising the stored data and a second part, possibly in human readable format, comprising file format information which, in the reading step, is used for identifying the bits and/or decoding the bit stream to derive its content. The writing step may include writing the file as a regular bit pattern onto the durable storage medium using a redundancy and/or an error correction algorithm. It may also comprise applying at least two different first algorithms to the data, thus encoding said data into at least two differently encoded files and writing each of said differently encoded files into or onto the durable storage medium as a regular bit pattern. It may further include writing differently encoded files as at least one regular bit pattern onto the storage medium using redundancy and/or error correction, thus providing a multiple redundancy of the data to be archived.;The invention also concerns an appropriately adapted system including means for creating an encoded file in a self-describing, corruption-safe format, means for writing said encoded file into or onto a storage medium, and second means including means for scanning the medium and locating existing machine-recognizable regular patterns, means for imaging each pattern into a data pattern in a memory, means for analysing the data pattern and identifying bits in said data pattern, and for producing a bit stream as output. The invention further concerns a method for reading or reconstructing data from a data carrier by scanning said data carrier to create an image of said data, producing an image comprising at least a part of said data in a memory, analyzing said image to derive a bit pattern, and reading said bit pattern to generate a bit stream representing said data on said data carrier.
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