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Digital Storage To Survive a 25-Year Dirt Nap?

Posted by timothy on from the lazarus-brand-only-goes-a-few-days dept.

AlHunt writes "I've been tasked with finding a way to bury digitally stored photographs in a small underground time capsule to be opened in 25 years. It looks like we'll be using a steel vessel, welded closed. I've thought of CDs, DVDs, a hard drive, or a thumb drive — but they all have drawbacks, not the least of which is outdated technology 25 years from now. Maybe I'll put a CD and a CD-ROM drive in the capsule and hope that the IDE interface is still around in 25 years? Ideas and feedback will be appreciated."

44 of 1,044 comments (clear)

  1. SATA, not IDE by Ubitsa_teh_1337 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Change up IDE for SATA and you might have a chance, since SATA is relatively new and SATA2 is backwards compatible with SATA1, etc.

    1. Re:SATA, not IDE by tekiegreg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd be curious to know whether or not a laptop could survive 25 years underground. I know he said welded shut, but rust and corrosion could still be issues.

      Maybe blueprints on how to build a computer to read said media should be included on paper? Then again even there, it's the same issue...

      Of course do take some comfort in that media useable in 1983 (25 years ago) can still be accessible with hardware available today in the second hand market, or even new hardware; certainly no new giant tape reels are being manufactured, but I do occasinally spot big tape reel reading equipment available on Ebay or some such place. I also recently spotted a USB drive for 5.25" disks which were around as far back as 1970, so take heart.

      --
      ...in bed
    2. Re:SATA, not IDE by hurfy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      hehe, 25 years ago we used a Wang 10MB removable platter for storage. Good luck with reading that. I have never seen the drive come up on eBay and the shipping alone would be several hundred plus adding a 20 amp circuit to plug it into :) Only a handful of working systems in US including mine.

      With the zillions of USB devices around they MAY make it that far. That Wang did make it 15+ years cause there were (relatively) alot of them installed. A SATA CD drive or HD might work. I also think the IDE drive is the least likely choice, it is only hanging on because of the CD/DVD drives :(

      I imagine any of them would be available second hand however due to sheer numbers now. HAving one out of thousands is a ways from finding one of 100's of millions in 25 years. Toss both a CD and thumbdrive in there and call it a day. Hmm, on second thought will the media itself be readable at that age? CDR probably won't make it. No idea on thumbdrive lifespan. Maybe a HD afterall, should be able to dig up (oops, bad pun) something to run it somewhere. Will a modern HD even store data that long?

    3. Re:SATA, not IDE by jedie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At that rate it would make more sense to just print the photos.

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    4. Re:SATA, not IDE by Rapidity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'd be curious to know whether or not a laptop could survive 25 years underground. I know he said welded shut, but rust and corrosion could still be issues.

      Silica gel is often used in new furniture or goods that are going to be stored for a long time, it soaks up moisture and prevents anything nasty growing inside. I expect that could quite easily be used, a significant amount and keeping as much moisture from getting into the container before it's sealed would solve that issue.

      I'm more worried about knocks and magnets. If someone dug up a metal capsule in 25 years, would they know its contents were susceptible to shock or magnets?

      (Talk about off-topic for something titled "Re:SATA, not IDE" xD)

    5. Re:SATA, not IDE by NoCowardsHere · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uhh, dude, it's only 25 years. That's not a long time; barely a third of a lifetime. It's probably not nearly worth the cost to etch a metal disk and design a machine to read it in 25 years. Now, if he wanted to read it in 10,000 years, you might be on to something...

    6. Re:SATA, not IDE by Z80xxc! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The OLPC has a hand-crank generator... as far as I can tell, hands will still be able to crank 25 years from now.

    7. Re:SATA, not IDE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Digital data doesn't fade. Analog photos do.

    8. Re:SATA, not IDE by FlyByPC · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Problem with not storing with battery is that Lithium Ion may not be around in 25 years [...] Leaving a tech to figure out how to power this device up,

      Just mark the fool thing with "15VDC, tip positive, 2A." Basic electrical specs aren't going away anytime soon. Any "tech" worth the title will know what to do with it. If someone gave me a computer from 25 years ago, I could get it running.

      Heck, it'd be easy -- I'd just wire it to the Z80 computer I'm building for an upcoming course to be taught this fall at Drexel.

      --
      Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
    9. Re:SATA, not IDE by NeverVotedBush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How about just printing and storing the photographs? Use Giclee since it's archival and should easily last 100 years (it's pigment and not dye), and no computer is even needed to read out the data.

      Just a thought...

    10. Re:SATA, not IDE by cgenman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      25 years is not all that long. My relatives still have 25 year old computers, and I've seen much older still in production use at companies. The main difference is the lack of power and regular use. Could a battery or a process be used to intermittently power a device every 6 months for 25 years? The traditional solution to bit rot (either flash or otherwise) is to refresh with new energy and new copying.

      I assume that archival quality photo prints are too large for what you're attempting to store. What about writing each picture to a frame of a projection tape? Archival movie stock is pretty well understood at this point, and the size shouldn't be prohibitive.

      For that matter, pay IBM to host an encrypted file of the pictures for 25 years. On a large slab of granite chisel the URL, searchable file name, and decryption code.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
    11. Re:SATA, not IDE by getuid() · · Score: 2, Insightful

      as for getting them off that device later...thats his problem :)

      Make it a laptop with a good old serial line (RS-232) or parport and a C compiler. That way, whatever hardware he'll have in 25 years, he sould *definitely* find someone able to wire something together and write a small program to download them.

      It doesn't necessary need to be a fully RS-232 compliant port in 25 years from now... he just needs a way to wiggle one or two lines -- enough information to be able to transmit single bits and a little handshaking around it. Should be ready to transmit with two feet of wire and an afternoon's worth of work :-)

    12. Re:SATA, not IDE by OneMadMuppet · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Punched cards. Been around forever, will be around forever.

  2. Print them by Asmor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, just print them. Unless we somehow evolve new sensory organs in the next 25 years, I suspect that photographs won't be rendered useless through obsolescence. They can always scan them into new digital files afterwards.

    1. Re:Print them by arthurpaliden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      On high quality paper with really good inks. this is the only way to avoid data loss.

      --
      Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
    2. Re:Print them by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Seriously, just print them. Unless we somehow evolve new sensory organs in the next 25 years, I suspect that photographs won't be rendered useless through obsolescence. They can always scan them into new digital files afterwards.

      "Just print them" shifts the nature of the question to "how do I make it last"
      I wouldn't expect most photo printer paper to last 25 years.

      --
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      o0t!
    3. Re:Print them by Asmor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, if data loss is an issue, then you shouldn't be burying it in the ground for 25 years. You should be keeping redundant backups and keeping the backups updated to the latest in archival technology every few years.

      If you just want to make a time capsule, and a relatively short-term one at that, then even a modest printing should be perfectly adequate.

      That said, I'd still recommend springing for some nice quality prints just because they are much nicer, and it'll be that much cooler when you open them.

      It probably is a wise idea to investigate the inks used, though. Photographs seem to last a while, but I don't know how well printer ink lasts and whether it fades with age.

    4. Re:Print them by Darkness404 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ummm... I'm sure that most of us who are 25 years old or older have pictures of themselves that are stored in bad conditions and still look decent.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    5. Re:Print them by DigitalCrackPipe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually, not all printed photographs will last 25 years. Professional prints on photographic paper might, but inkjet printed photographs likely will not. Before going to the corner drugstore and printing them and calling the job done, I'd suggest doing the research into what the actual (the claims are generally false or non-scientific) expected quality would be in 25 years for the specific printing method and quality of chemicals used in that location.

    6. Re:Print them by marcansoft · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Even block based ciphers have problems. If your data has random bit errors every now and then, a block cipher will corrupt an entire block (often 16 bytes) for each one of those. A no-feedback (XOR based) stream cipher might work though.

      Also, digital pictures are best stored in uncompressed formats. Preferably a raw bitmap with no headers even, together with a printed document describing the format (which can be done in a sentence or two). Fixed resolution 8bit/channel RGB data will degrade gracefully with random bit errors (to an extent), unlike compressed formats like JPG and PNG which will just die completely.

  3. How about.... by uberhobo_one · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about a small digital picture frame? That way you could throw in your own flash drive, and the pictures would come with their own display medium. I'm sure they'll still have AA batteries 25 years from now.

    1. Re:How about.... by goto+begin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ... I'm sure they'll still have AA batteries 25 years from now.

      Let's hope not?

    2. Re:How about.... by lgw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why would such a common industrial form factor change? D cells, sure, you don't see them as much because people don't want the size and weight, but AA batteries fit in things that fit your hand nicely.

      --
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  4. Why not... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    just bury the entire PC. Surely AC power will still be around in 25 years.

    1. Re:Why not... by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Won't work. The lead-free solder used in modern laptops will grow tin whiskers over that much time, and short out.

      The way I see it, there actually isn't any available technology which will reliably store digital photos for 25 years.

  5. Technology finds a way by kentrel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It really doesn't matter. If you use any popular media the technology will still be around to use it. We live in a big world, and there always geeks who love to collect stuff like that.

  6. Paper? by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it absolutely, positively has to survive 25 years, it might be worth the expense of getting the photos professionally printed on good quality paper and, if you're worried about the box leaking, laminated. Okay, it's a smartass answer, but those are photos you're going to store, and they're known to last more than 25 years easily.

    --
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  7. Not that hard by Ecuador · · Score: 2, Insightful

    25 years is not THAT much, you make the problem sound much harder than it is.
    Prints is an obvious solution as already mentioned.
    Then, include a couple of CD copies. Forget about putting IDE drives in there. The CD format has been around for more than 25 years, I am sure we will keep using some sort of optical media that will be CD compatible for a few more years. Even if they don't make CD-R compatible drives in 25 years (which i doubt), it will be easy to find an older drive with the capability. Just make sure you use archival-quality media and don't stick any CD-label on it.
    Then throw in a usb thumbdrive in case the USB (along with the thumbdrive) survive!

    --
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  8. Re:USB Stick by rho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Floppy drives, $9 from Newegg.

    You can still buy motherboards with serial and parallel ports, for God's sake.

    25 years isn't that far in the future.

    --
    Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
  9. Dig it up. by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Archive the data in some sane fashion, and then, in 24 years, dig it up and stick in a DVD (or for extra credit, a format that has not existed for the entire time the capsule has been buried.

    Another option would be to contact Amazon or Google and ask how much they would charge you to keep the backup live for 25 years and then just bury the account information.

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  10. 5.25" optical media probably the best choice by Martin+Blank · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The 5.25" optical disc format seems to be the most likely to survive, given that the CD doesn't seem to be getting replaced in a physical format anytime soon, and the follow-on products (DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray) all use the same basic format and are backward-compatible due to the low cost of the lasers involved for the previous format(s). Given the preference in the mainstream to keep backward compatibility and the fact that even the fun new terabyte media are in a similar format, this is the best overall bet.

    --
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  11. Binary on Stainless Steel by al0ha · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Etch the image binary data on a stainless steel tags, if the tags are big enough and the etching small enough, perhaps one tag per image. This will be recoverable by humans 25 years in the future - or aliens +100,000 years. ;-)

    Here's a resource to get started http://www.advancedgraphicengraving.com/stainless-steel-tags.html

    --
    Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
  12. Re:Multiple choice by lymond01 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think of all those interfaces the most likely to still be used is Ethernet cabling. Get a NAS with ipv6 and dhcp enabled. Assuming we've adopted ipv6 in the next 25 years, this may be your best bet. Also consider wireless!

  13. Not going to survive by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The media may survive and be theoretically readable, but nobody will be able to read it. 25 years ago was 1983. The IBM PC was only 2 years old, the PC/XT had just been introduced. The IDE interface you hope will be around in 25 years? It didn't exist then. It didn't appear until 1986, and wasn't standardized (as ATA) until 1994. And it's at this point been all but replaced by SATA (I expect EIDE/ATAPI CD/DVD drives to be completely replaced by SATA ones by next year). The standard disk interfaces 25 years ago? ST-506, ESDI and SCSI. I don't expect changes in drive interfaces to slow down any, so expect in 25 years that even if you include the drive nobody's going to have a controller interface to plug it into. 9-track mag tape, 8" floppies, 5.25" floppies, punch cards, all those were standard digital media 25 years ago and you'd be hard-pressed to find equipment to read the media or computers that can interface with the equipment if you do find it.

  14. For those suggesting he just print them out... by pla · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Two major problems with printing them, for all the Luddites that have replied so far...

    First, a single CD will hold 500-1000 images, stored as reasonably high-quality JPEGs. A similar stack of printouts on photo-quality paper would measure up to a foot thick (1000 pictures on 12mil paper).

    Second, and perhaps more important if volume doesn't matter, a sheet of paper will break down far faster than a polycarbonate disc when subjected to a moist environment.

    Simple solution? Burn a dozen copies of a CD using something like PAR2 redundancy to allow complete recovery if even a tenth of the content remains readable on each CD. Include simple extraction instructions in a more durable form (a note sealed in an acrylic block? an etched nickel tablet? Something like that - Small and to the point). For the naysayers, this involves 25 years, not 2500. We'll still have CD reading drives available then, whether museum pieces or simple due to never-ending backward compatibility in newer optical drives.

  15. I'd say go for a flash drive... by Kjella · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...seriously, outdated? They will sell CD/DVD/Blu-Ray combo players for decades still, though my experience with CD-Rs has been strained in the longetivity department. And with USB1/2/3, you think that's going away? Hell, we still haven't been able to kill the keyboard/mouse PS/2 plug, and that one is extremely much less useful. Don't go with HDD interfaces, they could easily change. But the external connectors that people have tons of USB gadgets and CD records of? You got to be kidding me. If it's just readable, we'll have the readers.

    --
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  16. Put it above ground by GiMP · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is no good reason to put time-capsules underground besides some strange belief that it should be done that way. You're much better putting the contents above-ground inside of a wall, behind a plaque, etc. This way, it is much less likely for there to be water or other sorts of damage that plagues underground storage, you also have a smaller chance of it being lost or forgotten. If secured properly, there should be very minimal risk of tampering.

  17. Encapsulate the pictures in some porn ... by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... and seed it out as a torrent. Forget about burying the stuff ... who will remember where it was buried? A good porn torrent (or even a bad one) is like something out of a De Beers commercial: those torrents *really* last forever.

    I'm not so sure if there will be folks around in 25 years who understand CD/DVD/USB technology ... but one thing I will guarantee, they will be wanking off on Internet porn.

    --
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  18. Machine and spec. by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Full machine, ROM (not EPROM, not EEPROM, not Flash) storage with ECC, and a ROM reader. Leave instructions for powering up the machine: 120VAC at 60Hz sinusoidal, diagram the connector to show hot-neutral-ground. It's pretty hard to not do that right; I get whatever the hell voltage I want out of transformers, and can rectify and then solid-state generate AC at any frequency. That's your best option.

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  19. What's with everyone picking ONE format? by spoco2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why is everyone suggest A format?

    Why not store the data on a:
    * DVD
    * Pile of CDs
    * USB drive
    * SD card
    * xD card
    * Hard drive

    And a choice few in hard copy.

    Seriously... with the price of these things, and the timeframe, surely you can afford to store it on all of these things and put them all in? Plus it'll be fascinating in 25 years time to see how many are still readable... all? None? Some?

  20. PROM, EPROM, EEPROM by ps_inkling · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Given how many arcade games have survived the past 30 years, why not burn the data to a modern EPROM? It's lasted to this point for old console games, old motherboards, even fairly modern video games.

    The interface could be problematic, but somebody will have the means to read the data off of the EPROM into our quantum-tunneling diamond-substrate 100GHz personal computer interface devices. Or that dusty Pentium 2GHz non-DRM computer in the basement.

  21. Re:Rust prevention / Paper printouts by xSauronx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    kinda look like it comes down to this entire idea being a terrible....idea. storage is always evolving and parts are dying and becoming obsolete.

    so if you want to keep data...just store it, re-index it to new media every 6-12 months and change to the new $cheap_media every 2 or 3 years.

    i had a cd of pics from my daughters birth that i ripped clean a few weeks ago, and it was 7 years old. doing something every 2 -3 years should be easy, and still affordable.

    --
    By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
  22. Re:Rust prevention / Paper printouts by shadowmas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    -use something like paper disk [http://www.paperdisk.com/] to print the data on paper made with a plastic. or maybe laminate it ordinary paper.
    -Write the decoding algorithm using a very basic language like c and leave a printout of the code along with the encoded data. Even a hundred years into the future, people will be able to find C manuals. Even if no one uses it they will be able to either write a new C compiler or translate it to their language of choice.
    -Your biggest problem would probably be about the data itself. once the extract the bitstream how do they decode it to information. Hopefully people will still be able to decode jpegs, mp3s, and text documents. if not you will need to give them algorithms to those as well. (but for 25 years i think this should not be a problem)

  23. Re:Rust prevention / Paper printouts by Jesus_666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't use normal paper. Normal paper doesn't last as long as the stuff thes used centuries ago. Look into which kinds of paper have the highest longevity. With the right paper and ink you could possibly save data and have it survive for 250 years.

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