Good point. Go for punched cards. OK maybe not :-)

It may depend on where you intend to lodge the archive.

Maybe etched titanium.

Paper and ink? Remember the Dead Sea Scrolls?! ;o)

Look guys all very helpful but I am trying to save video and jpgs in a sealed capsule, in a wall in a house.

What's the shelf life of our current technology.

M: The service life of DVD-R (specifically DVD-R, not other DVD variants) is estimated at more than 100 years. I woudn't give a hard drive that much chance of working after that time (rotating medium, lubrication, bearings, heads resting on disc etc) and I don't believe that flash media (USB sticks etc) are that stable over a long period of time either.

Not done much research, just based on my own knowledge.

That assumes they're still making something capable of reading DVDs in 100 years time. Technology is bound to move on.

How would you be feeling now if you'd taken a VHS video and put that in the time capsule as recent as 10 or 15 years ago?

It might also be an idea to also put something into the time capsule capable of reading DVDs. How big is the wall?

:o)

Holographic tablets as featured on Star Trek?

Martini

It's some time since I looked at this issue, but the last time I did, hard drives were likely to last 20+ years and CDR's 2+ years and DVD's more. The only thing that was guaranteed to last was the Iomega REV cartridge that at the time was guaranteed for 30 years.

I would guess that all of those estimates have now increased but I would be surprised if they are expected to last 100 years.

If you want to play safe, use DVD's, 2.5 inch hard drives, micro SD cards (because they are modern and ave the highest storeage density and my well last beyond their 20 year expectation) and an REV cartridge if you can get one.

Connection will be a problem. We certainly will not be using SATA or USB, but for the hard drive, you can get some cases that have USB, Ethernet and Firewire connectors, that should give the best chance.

Also, enclose hard copy of all the equipment specs, don't use cheap ink.

Thanks optimist. CDRs only 2+ years ??

M

Yes that was what I read some time back. The 2 year figure was a minimum, clearly many of them will last a lot longer than that though my experience suggests that quality may not have improved since I saw that figure. The main difference between CDR and DVDR is that with CDR the media layer is coated on the outside but with DVDR it is sandwached between two pieces of plastic. Hence it is protected.

Opti: The 100-year life expectancy for DVD-R is, amazingly, correct. However, not all discs are equal: a high-quality brand is more likely to survive than some no-name from a cheap stack. A DVD-R uses silver in the sandwich and is sealed from moisture and contaminents at its edges. However contact with sulfates should be avoided.

The point about having equipment to read them is valid: "What is this thing? Oh, I remember seeing pictures of these in use - they used 'em as bird-scarers back in the old days . . ."

MM

I did not mean to doubt your figures, I was merely giving the reaso why CDR lifedpan can be so poor.

I still think it best to store things in every possible format. The way I see it is that the last DVD player will be made in 10 or 15 years time. Virtually every device we now use depends on some form of flash memory, if the estimates of 20 odd years for flash memory are anywhere near correct, then it will be down to luck if anything we save now can be read after even 50 years. .

I suspect we'll just keep transferring everything to a new medium. I can confirm what is said about CDRs. We have some business info stored onto CDRs between 2002-5 that are barely readable. We've recovered some information. None of it is critical, just nice to have. Normal reading of these discs was impossible, but a recovery program that a colleague found has got some of the information, some was a bit corrupted, some unreadable.

Thinking a bit more about this, is it possible that the Internet - in the form of the Cloud - provides the answer.

The Internet is proving to be a remarkably persistant storage medium. It's making it impossible to forget your past utterances, they will keep coming back to haunt you. Indeed, young people are now being warned about consigning their youthful indiscretions to the 'net (on Facebook and so on) because they will preserved for - well, how long?

Is the Internet now the Planet's memory?

The reason is, of course, that data is preserved by services as they upgrade technology. It's long been recognised that an organisation's data is its most valuable asset in IT terms (more so even than the programs that create or manipulate it).

So, there you are M - stick it up the Cloud and leave a URL on indelible ink on a piece of paper in your time capsule.

MM
I already have on line storage of 100Gb via dropbox, which syncs all my data to the web. Problem is if I stop paying for it bye bye.

Also it is not quite the same as opening a time capsule. I would like to think it is there whatever and on the web is still at the whim of someone elses "What shall we keep" decision.

Unless that is someone who does some sort of legacy site where a one off payment guarantees archiving forever.

A business proposition? A web site called "Forever" maybe?

Stick it in a condom - they normally 'contain' the data.

Put all of your data into an email and send it attached to a bomb threat or some sort of malicious email threatening a prominent figure to the police or a government department. They will almost certainly keep it for close to forever. The trouble is that you might have trouble referring to it and extracting the data at a later date.

On one of my PCs, Firefox got a number of problems: (a) has stopped keeping me logged-in to websites where I've saved login details, (b) takes an absolute age to open the monitor page here.

I've tried deleting all cookies, and this hasn't solved the problem.

Any ideas?

"a government department. They will almost certainly keep it for close to forever"

Or leave it on a train !!

TP

I am wanting to change my Dell laptop with 2mb memory for something with 4mb.
An Acer 5732Z looks about right for my needs. Does anyone have any thoughts about the Acer?

One issue I have with the Dell is that I cannot run MS Access from MS Office Pro 97, (yes it's old but why update when the old one does what's needed?). This seems to be due to there not being enough memory to run it.

Also, will an ancient version of Office run under Win7?

Many thanks