This question was inspired by https://superuser.com/questions/374386/how-to-store-and-preserve-lots-of-data. There have been other similar questions, but none with the same criteria.
This is two questions in one.
- How do you store financial/critical records that should survive anything but a fire and should be available for decades?
- Lets say I want to store family photos/videos and want people do be able to find them in storage 100 years from now and still be able to use them. How would this be done?
Criteria
- Long term means 30+ years guaranteed. 100+ years average. [If this is not practical, use the closest solution]
- High volume means a couple terabytes.
- Answers can be 'no-compromise/industrial' solutions or practical solutions for the home office/small business user.
- Media will not be active during the timespan. (i.e., if you suggest hard drives, they will not be spinning).
- Further, there is no expectation of needing to read these archives. They are there for emergency or "for future generations" purposes.
- Should not require maintenance (if at all possible).
My thoughts:
- CD-R/DVD-Rs have proven to me, even in the short term, to be a terrible medium for backups. They seem to be very fragile and seem to lose their data a very short time even when in pristine condition.
- I can't help but think that storing data on a couple of 1TB hdd's and then expecting them to spin up correctly a decade or two later to be a terrible idea. Am I wrong?
- Industrial tape drives seem like a viable option?
Best Answer
Paper
Other than archival ink on archival paper in sealed storage, no current medium is proven to last an average 100 years without any sort of maintenance.
Archival Paper
Archival Inks
Redundant storage
Torvalds once said
Which suggests you should not rely on a single copy on a single medium.
Not magnetic media?
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/the-bell-tolls-for-your-magnetic-media/9364?tag=content;siu-container
Not specialized systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Domesday_Project#Preservation
Long Term Personal storage
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/long-term-personal-data-storage/376