A few years back I corresponded with a former NASA employee who had a bunch of magnetic tapes from a NASA 60's era mission and was trying to put together a machine to read the data since the ones at NASA were no longer working. Last I heard, he had still not been able to assemble a functioning machine. So much for long term storage. Patrick Brent Watson wrote:
I hsve long predicted that our generation would be the generation that becomes unknown in the future. Magnetic media has a long lifetime, but not that long. Magnetic records can last for a hundred years, but other circumstances make it a poor choice for archiving. Among these are the materials used in and near the magnetic medium. These things include adhesives used to hold hubs on media, plastic cases outgasing, etc.