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Engrave it in nickel... http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm

Back in 1999, the New York Times conducted a competition to design a time capsule that would last 1,000 years. The winning design, by Santiago Calatrava, used a technology called HD-Rosetta. Links to relevant articles are here: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/timescapsule/ and here: http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm

This problem of long-term digital storage seemed a crucial hurdle for any civilization trying to act generationaly. How could a society think in terms of centuries unless there was a reliable way to transmit and store its knowledge over centuries? This puzzle was the focus of a conference hosted by Long Now in 1998, dedicated to technical solutions for Managing Digital Continuity. At this meeting Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive suggested a new technology developed by Los Alamos labs, and commercialized by the Norsam company, as a solution for long term digital storage. Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.

See also the link to the Norsam Company Note that metal CD's and DVD's are also available.

The only concern is the cost of this 25 year archive

http://www.norsam.com/

Disclaimer: No, I do not work for them, nor do I own any stock in the company.

Probably out of your price range, but it would certainly outlast anything mentioned so far.

At one time there was an extremely long term storage solution called (I think) HD-ROM, which was discs of nickel etched by an ion beam. An implementation seems to be at this link http://ww.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm/

If you want to store data permanently, this is just the ticket...

http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm

Of course I wrote the above muse before checking google. Here's the theory in practice. Elegant as hell I might add:

http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm

What we have here is the counterpart to a similar problem in image formats and other media.

The problem is how to create a specification for documents that will not obsolete after five or ten years. You see the issue brilliantly with the old NASA video and data tapes that no longer have appropriate reader equipment to access the data, meaning that the information is potentially lost to our posterity.

Now we have it regular documents, with the very real possibility that in the event of a technology disaster, the formats used with not be accessible. Data Encryption to protect copyright holders will prevent easy access to data vital for a rebuild.

On a tangent, so far the best storage solution I can come up with is the HD-Rosetta Stone project which only requires an optical microscope.

But this does not address the issue of obsolete file formats. There is the chance that that the most durable and accessible will be the most simple. Not Frontpage HTML or some similar monstrousity. In this case, simple IS good.

About the only way I know of to preserve content for long periods of time is to etch the information in clearly legible plain text on gold tablets. [...] The only problem with this strategy [...] is that sometimes the gold itself as bullion is more valuable than the information it contains.

Try something like this : http://www.norsam.com/hdrosetta.htm/ if your data is worth being kept for a longer time. Be sure to use the version that is readable without electron microscope.
Maybe there is a service for etching data into stone... if there isn't, maybe there is a business opportunity ;-)

If you are going to compromise for something cheaper and simpler I suggest rebackuping everything every 2-5 years and not destroying the old media and checking the condition of the older storage medias. This way if the new storage media is unreliable, there is high likelyhood that the older ones still work.

Here is a company that does something similar, except on a much smaller scale, and to nickel plates, rather than stone tablets, and using a focused ion beam, rather than a chisel or finger of God, and I guess it isn't that similar after all.

We all know that clay, stone, and ceramic records can last for thousands of years in terrible conditions, but those records are kilo-bit order projects, and an entirely different animal than sound.

One thing this guy may want to consider is a Rosetta type of storage system. If you convert the reel-to-reel recording to a digital format, then transcode to a uuencode style format, the result could be recorded in an extremely stable human and machine readable format.

If the guy really wanted stability and long term interpretability, he could encode a 1Khz sine wave using the same method and use that as descriptive meta-data. That way future generations could have nice, simple test file to run their automated decoders on. Even if all knowledge about how the file was encoded is lost, the repetitie pattern would probably be noticed. If the archivists in 2152, common era, have any idea that the disk is a sound recording, they'll surely figure the rest out.

I work with a amateur historian that's quite looney, over all, but she is always making good points about meta-data. Recording information about the sound, how it was made, who made it, and anything you can think of might make the difference between a sad lost opportunity and a major discovery. Historian types really love it when they find an old picture with names and dates written on the back. Often they can use their other archives to cross reference and to infer information that would be impossible without the meta-data. For example, they could use a known good picture of a certain building, and a picture of a person with a part of said building to place that person in a certain town at a certain time. That's a small example, but anyone can see how important a small point can be when trying to figure out a puzzle with 90% of the pieces destroyed.

Also, the guy may want to think about getting the originals into proper storage. That may mean giving them to an institution, but it beats having them destroyed because your cat peed on them.

People are spending big bucks to recover wax cylinder recordings of opera singers. Surely they'll do it for actual historical records put down by eye witnesses!

This guys sounds interested enough to re-record every 5 years to the latest and greatest storage technology, but what about his heirs? If fate curses him with Alzheimer's disease, will his kiddies care of have enough energy to do the job? Probably not and the chain could be broken. That's the real threat, I think.

...but short of carving your bits on rocks or etching them onto gold plates, I don't think you'd find anything better.

However, these results cannot be extrapolated to very long times because chemical changes in the environment that may take place with time were not taken into account.

...but short of carving your bits on rocks or etching them onto gold plates, I don't think you'd find anything better.

However, these results cannot be extrapolated to very long times because chemical changes in the environment that may take place with time were not taken into account.

Due to the speed of the disk platters, and performance limitations in current magnetic head technology, most drives write their data "end-to-end", like so:

( --> direction of spin --> )

-0--0-00--0-0-0--0-

However, simply by rotating the read-write head by 90 degrees, we can write the data "perpendicularly", like so:

|0||0|00||0|0|0|0|

Obviously the "1" bits stack more efficiently in this orientation. For example:

||||||||

The greatest gains will be seen by data composed mostly of "1" bits, as they take less room to write than the "0" bits (when written "perpendicularly").

Further density improvements are expected with the change to a smaller font size for data storage too...

And to complete the joke see HD-Rosetta

This is possibly the coolest thing I've seen in a while.

I know this parent was modded up as +Funny, but it's actually +Informative. "Rock and chisel" are the best thing we have, and there's a real trend toward using it more. Take a look at Norsam's HD-Rosetta. It's an etched nickel plate designed to last for thousands of years. Vive la Rock & Chisel!

Out of curiosity -- are there any digital media specifically designed for centuries of storage? (In reality, as long as the specs for whatever reader are kept, we can always build another one.) I'm pretty sure that standard CDs, tapes, etc. don't last more than a few decades if you're lucky.

Try one of these for your data archiving. No software dependencies, long media life, etc.

The Long Now Foundation is using analog technology for their Rosetta Disk project. This project aims to make a permanent archive of the worlds languages.

This technology is by far the best way to create permenant archives that will be impervious to all the problems associated with digital data.

Better than the etched nickel the Rosetta Project is planning to use?

I am keeping an eye on Norsam's storage. Uses an electron beam instead of a laser, and an electron microscope to read the pits. 200GB per 5 inch disk; 10 of these stack in a cube, and then a wall mount of 30 cubes. 60 terabytes. mmmmm. Obviously these would not be form home use. These are still in vapor, but Norsam has some cool stuff they are doing now. They use licensed LANL tech to do nanotyping and create permanent analog storage discs that are read with an electron scope.

some people have thought about this already -- a company called 'norsam' is producing 2" nickel coated silicon wafers which will last thousands of years and are viewable using simply a microscope. they can hold 10K pages of analog text, potentially including instructions on how to build e.g. an 8" floppy drive, or grammars/structures of languages that are dying out. anyway, read more at http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html

The disks are manufactured by Norsam in Oregon.

You send TIFF files to the manufacturer, each being the image of a page. The disk will hold anywhere from 1000 to 100,000 page images; the more pages you squeeze on, the more powerful the microscope needed to read it.

Los Alamos tested a disc, and it seemed to hold up pretty well, although a long time in salt water caused slow corrosion, and baking it at high temperature messed it up.

Norsam's Web site is mum on pricing, but a discussion among some of the Long Now/Rosetta Disc folks suggests a one-off disc might be as low as $2K. If I weren't such a lazy ass, I might sign up as a reseller.

For $10k, you can get a cute add-on I didn't expect-- a computerized microscope reader that shifts the field of view as you point and click. Microfiche for the modern age, and future ones too, I guess.

The disks are manufactured by Norsam in Oregon.

You send TIFF files to the manufacturer, each being the image of a page. The disk will hold anywhere from 1000 to 100,000 page images; the more pages you squeeze on, the more powerful the microscope needed to read it.

Los Alamos tested a disc, and it seemed to hold up pretty well, although a long time in salt water caused slow corrosion, and baking it at high temperature messed it up.

Norsam's Web site is mum on pricing, but a discussion among some of the Long Now/Rosetta Disc folks suggests a one-off disc might be as low as $2K. If I weren't such a lazy ass, I might sign up as a reseller.

For $10k, you can get a cute add-on I didn't expect-- a computerized microscope reader that shifts the field of view as you point and click. Microfiche for the modern age, and future ones too, I guess.

Currently there aren't any real long time (500 years for example) preservation solutions for digital information.

Colin Smith notes,

Man - stone tablets are the way to go!

Only guaranteed storage mechanism! Good for thousands of years.
Capacity: 2Kb/tablet
I/O: 1 byte/hr...

Have a look at http://www.norsam.com/rom.html for digital archiving and http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html for analog archival storage. The basic technology is to use particle beams to write very high resolution to silicon wafers ("high-performance rock" :-), which are extremely durable as long as you don't go after them with a sledgehammer or something.

...impervious to electromagnetic disturbances and has the ability, where needed, to store data on materials that are extremely durable and resistant to abrasion, atmospheric contamination, heat and other types of physical deterioration.

Norsam is partially funded by IBM venture capital, by the way.

Currently there aren't any real long time (500 years for example) preservation solutions for digital information.

Colin Smith notes,

Man - stone tablets are the way to go!

Only guaranteed storage mechanism! Good for thousands of years.
Capacity: 2Kb/tablet
I/O: 1 byte/hr...

Have a look at http://www.norsam.com/rom.html for digital archiving and http://www.norsam.com/rosetta.html for analog archival storage. The basic technology is to use particle beams to write very high resolution to silicon wafers ("high-performance rock" :-), which are extremely durable as long as you don't go after them with a sledgehammer or something.

...impervious to electromagnetic disturbances and has the ability, where needed, to store data on materials that are extremely durable and resistant to abrasion, atmospheric contamination, heat and other types of physical deterioration.

Norsam is partially funded by IBM venture capital, by the way.

You might look into the storage products offered by Norsam Technologies, such as HD-ROSETTA. The idea is to basically etch either bits or actual text (readable under a microscope) onto a metal disk. This technology is being considered for the library envisioned by the Long Now Foundation.

Several groups are looking into this technology as a possible way to stably maintain their archives over a very long period of time. Take a look at the Long Now Foundation library for an example.

NORSAM HD-ROM is impervious to electromagnetic disturbances and has the ability, where needed, to store data on materials that are extremely durable and resistant to abrasion, atmospheric contamination, heat and other types of physical deterioration.

They had a test done at Los Alamos National Labs where they tested the media for corruption after exposure to extreme heat and corrosive conditions.

It's not quite ready for people to have an HDROM burner in their home PCs, but I suspect that when the patents run out in a dozen years, many will take interest in the technology...

NORSAM HD-ROM is impervious to electromagnetic disturbances and has the ability, where needed, to store data on materials that are extremely durable and resistant to abrasion, atmospheric contamination, heat and other types of physical deterioration.

They had a test done at Los Alamos National Labs where they tested the media for corruption after exposure to extreme heat and corrosive conditions.

It's not quite ready for people to have an HDROM burner in their home PCs, but I suspect that when the patents run out in a dozen years, many will take interest in the technology...

And real enough that they're getting some of their funding from IBM, fwiw.

http://www.norsam.com/hdrom.htm

At that density, a 6-platter changer holds a terabyte, and a dozen 500-platter jukeboxes hold a petabyte. If you want really fast access, stripe across multiple platters -- if you stripe 8-way, you get a transfer speed of 10 terabytes per minute, which does better than NASA's old tapes (someone said 23 months, iirc).

fwiw