Data will surely degrade over time, and large chunks will get lost as people stop copying things they think are no longer important, but I feel pretty confident in the idea that enough pieces will make it that far that these scientists (techno-archeologists?) won’t be starting from scratch

Right, that’s what I was trying to refer to in my reply, not a damage to this new storage media itself, but surrounding data/storage media that would provide help in reverse engineering it. Sorry I wasn’t clearer about that! I was thinking like if you didn’t have, say, a Rosetta Stone kind of artifact (or artifacts) to help in translating/reconstructing/reverse engineering.

That’s why I wrote that I think it’s really unlikely, like yourself, but it’s interesting to consider.