Thanks For the ... Eight-Track, Uncle Alex

Uncle Alex writes "My niece just turned one year old and her parents have asked that, instead of the usual gifts, we each contribute something to a time capsule to be opened on her 17th birthday. Multiple members of my family want to contribute digital data — text, video, music files. They came to me (the closest thing to a geek our family has) wondering: what's the best way to save the data to ensure she'll actually be able to see it in 16 years? Software might be out of date, hardware may no longer be used... any suggestions?"

Comments

Re:Think back 17 years

[bamf]

I still have music CDs that I purchased in the 1970's that are still usable :)

A pretty good trick since they weren't commercially available until late '82 :)

If you can't remember that far back, wikipedia it.

[argent]

20 years ago, an 8track would have been the thing to store information on.

20 years ago CDs were almost 10 years old, and 8-track was already "20 years ago, and you'd have a hard time finding a player".

Re:Pretty easy

[DrLang21]

What if USB ports disappear like PS/2, Centronics, and serial connections have disappeared?

This is a non-issue as you have described it. I just built a brand new computer 5 months ago. I was not interested in any of those items listed, yet it has a parallel port, a serial port, and two PS/2 ports. It's actually unfortunate that they don't make a RS-232 flash drive because the serial port is not going anywhere for a very long time. You might need to purchase a special card in the future to have it, but it is far too convenient and easy for use with industrial controls to ever die out.