With new technologies debuting all the time, students may find themselves losing data stored in their older gadgets, according to a new study.

According to a University of Illinois professor, Jerome P. McDonough, a "digital dark age" could have a significant effect on the ability of people and institutions to access data stored on older digital storage devices.

The study suggests information stored on older digital storage devices, such as floppy discs, or information created with older word processing programs, such as WordPerfect, can be lost forever because new technology cannot access the older formats.

Gerry Santoro, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, said the loss of data could be attributed to the ever-changing formats people use to store their data.

"Media formats change so quickly you sometimes find yourself in a position where the media you created cannot be read with the new technology," he said.

Jaret Haffner (junior-marketing) said he doesn't worry too much about losing his data.

"It doesn't cross my mind," he said. "I'm not concerned with that and keeping my files on my computer."

Haffner added that he would update his storage device to save his data if the time ever called for it.

Santoro said it is important for students to keep their data stored on the most recent media formats to prevent the loss of data.

"Any archived data that you want to hold on to, basically you need to digitally transfer that to new media formats," he said.

Rob Frieden, professor of telecommunications, said students and institutions need to ensure that they stay up-to-date on properly archiving their data.

"We have to pay attention to archival storage issues," he said. "If we don't, we could lose valuable works of art in a format that is not sustainable."

Josh Wilkocz (senior-kinesiology) said he once lost his data when his computer crashed, so he regularly backs up his files and stores his files using the latest technology.

"I usually try to put everything on a flash drive, and I put all my pictures on DVDs," Wilkocz added.

In addition to proper archiving, Santoro said people and groups need to pay more attention to the organization and management of information.

"That kind of heightens the importance of storage management and organizations should be savvy enough so that you don't lose that kind of archival data," he said.

Frieden said that preventing the loss of digital data is the responsibility of each individual person.

"Ultimately, individual work of the professor or the student is left up to them to update," Frieden said.