[5] Data degradation results from the gradual decay of storage media over the course of years or longer.
Causes vary by medium: Below are several digital images illustrating data degradation, all consisting of 326,272 bits.
This deterioration can be caused by a variety of factors that impact the reliability and integrity of digital information, including physical factors, software errors, security breaches, human error, obsolete technology, and unauthorized access incidents.
[19] Higher-level software systems may be employed to mitigate the risk of such underlying failures by increasing redundancy and implementing integrity checking, error correction codes and self-repairing algorithms.
[21] The Btrfs file system also includes data protection and recovery mechanisms,[22] as does ReFS.