What’s the Best Way to Store Data for Decades or Centuries? Bottom line: No Technology that is Easy or Practical

Danie
SSD drives and RAM

The concern keeps coming up (I’ve also been pondering it a lot and posted in this last week what I’ve been doing).

This linked article does sum up the essentials very well, and this helps illustrate why this is a challenge for 20 or 60 years or especially longer:

  1. Media – most people just worry about this and how it may degrade.
  2. Software drivers – you need the software to interface with whatever the hardware device is AND to decode / display the information. That software must also execute on whatever operating system you or your family are using in 60- or 100-years’ time… So, there are three dimensions to consider just around the software side alone, and they must ALL be satisfied. This is also why open standards (eg. PDF or ASCII text) are best, as there is more chance to be able to read them in future. Do you think MS Word 2007 will actually open on something in 2123?
  3. Hardware device – the media needs to fit into and be read. Do you still have a single sided floppy drive, for example? Can it connect to your current laptop? No, likely not.

So, we can see now why archivists still like old-fashioned paper, as it survives 400+ years and can be read by almost anyone (very old languages are a challenge). Microfilm, printed photos, etc are all mediums that can be understood without specialist hardware or software.

It’s quite true what is stated in the article about cloud storage. I’ve said so many times, that despite this generation generating more information and data than any other preceding it, it is also going to lose massive chunks of it. A generation or two of memories will be lost for many families, too. Ten or twenty years of photographs will just be lost in the twinkle of an eye off a personal hard drive, or 40GB sitting in a Google Drive will be lost in 40 years’ time as someone forgot to log in and keep the account active.

Any refreshing of online data I’m doing, I’m doing for myself. If I want my family to have any of my memories, I print those digital photos to paper albums, and I print my story out on paper. That’s all I can trust. Keeping GB of it in Google Drive or e-mailing it to someone… no, that won’t be around in 60- or 100-years’ time. I’d bet on it, but I probably won’t be here to collect the money.

See https://www.howtogeek.com/858426/whats-the-best-way-to-store-data-for-decades-or-centuries/