| So, things age. Things break. Is this true of invisible data like software? It's not a piece of paper that's got something spilled on it, or something that can rust. So how can it get...broken? Well, to start off with, most software, including operating systems, are sold with numerous bugs that will be fixed later. And, often, these bugs can cause problems with the way the application runs, sometimes corrupting the applications themselves. And, also, since software runs on hardware, and hardware ages as well, the software data can become lost and it's structure, over time, can decay. This is just under normal use. Operating systems also, suffer from what's called OS decay after time, and use. Settings and other data over time, can simply become corrupt when errors, unexpected shut downs and power failures occur. Also, software and operating systems are designed in such a way that they all communicate with each other. In an ideal world, things would just work well. However, in the real world, this communication doesn't always come off so well. Applications and operating systems can conflict with each other. Developers are always testing their code to prevent this from happening, but they can't account for everything. So, we wind up with errors that can cause data loss, including the data that are the programs themselves. |