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Ask Slashdot: Storing Items In a Sealed Chest For 25 Years?
New submitter accet87 writes "We are celebrating the Silver Jubilee of our graduation next month and have come up with an idea where we will build an air-tight chest in which each of us will deposit something and will open the chest only on our Golden Jubilee, i.e. after another 25 years. I want to understand what kind of items can be safely stored for 25 years and what kind of precautions are required to be taken. I am sure things like paper, non-ferrous metallic objects, wood, etc., will hold up well. What about data storage electronically? I don't think CD/DVDs, etc., will be usable. Even if the data is retained, reading it in 2037 may be a challenge."
On my first day of class of Junior High school, my Mother packed a lunch for me, which include a Thermos full of milk.
I promptly threw it in my locker and forgot about it.
On my last day of class, I was cleaning out the locker and found the abandoned Thermos. I brought it home unopened.
My Mother made me take it out to the far end of the lot and open and empty it out there, which I did.
The moral of the story: Don't put milk in your sealed chest!
If I were storing stuff for a long time, I would consider using an airtight sealed case, oxygen absorber and a dessicant, making sure that if any liquid came out, it could not touch the protected device. I would separate out items just to be safe.
Some items, like SD media, I'd also consider using anti-static packaging just for peace of mind as well.
Just load all of your photos, videos, data, etc onto a retina macbook pro and toss it in the case.
Maybe by 2037 someone will have figured out how to change the battery.
If so, you've got your data and you're good to go.
No worries man, end of epoch isn't until 2038.
It's been over 30 years now, and as long as DVD or Bluray players still exist, the CD will still be readable. CDs aren't going anywhere. (Note I said CD not CD-R or CD-RW which are self-erasing when the dye fades.)
VHS video will still be readable too (if necessary you can buy a used VCR from ebay in 2037). It's analog so even if it degrades it will still be watchable..... I know this from personal experience with 25-30 year old tapes.
That's about it. I wouldn't trust hard drives or flash drives to still work 25 years from now. I have an HD that I left sit for just 2 years, and already it's sluggish as if it doesn't want to start spinning.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Be careful about your hermetic seals, water leakage has turned many time capsules into a soggy brown liquid. I suggest some silica gel (the kind you shouldn't eat) to absorb any latent water in the air when you seal it so you don't get condesation. Anything you seal inside should either be readable by normal human means or include the reader. Avoid batteries or other volatile chemicals as they will leak. Burned CDs are really just like polaroid photographs and fade in about 15 years on the outset depending on the burn speed and qualities of the dyes. Include black and white photos or 3 color separations so that it is easy to put back together. Same goes for 3d photos, the future is likely to use more stereo photography so take a picture with 2 cameras next to each other of the same type. I use two iphones and tap the shutters simultanously a few times to see if I can get a match. Make sure you deposit the item in a place unlikely to face future development or it will just be shoveled up onto a trash pile. There's a start, but think long term. A lot can happen in a quarter century. LONGNOW DOT ORG
I have some 5.25" floppy disks that are over 30 years old, and I can still read them. I also have some that don't work, but most are fine. We're just hitting the point where it's hard to find PCs that will read 25-year-old 3.5" floppies (but good luck with an 800K Mac floppy).
In an air-tight container with no light exposure, I would expect a CD or DVD to be just fine after 25 years, and I would expect that you would still be able to find older computers that could read them.
Your best be for electronic data would probably be a USB flash stick. While the USB standard will evolve, if it goes to something incompatible, there will be plenty of conversion dongles.
Also, a USB flash stick would be a good representation of portable storage.
Or just put the data in "the cloud" and write the URL down on a piece of paper. I'm sure that will work. :)
I helped setup a "time capsule" back in 1985 for my college's centennial celebration, we expect to open the capsule in 2035. I hope to be alive when it happens, because I put some items in there. We placed lots of plastic, wood, paper, and metal objects in the capsule. For paper products,we treated each piece of paper with a mild basic solution that neutralizes the sulfur compounds used in the paper production so that the paper doesn't yellow and deteriorate. For wood, we only allowed solid pieces, and only "natural' wood, without lead or "weird" paints. Plastic was a wild card.. we didn't really know how they would react, so we decided to only allow "hard" plastic items, and no styrenes or lightweights. Metals had to be brass, iron, or "slightly" reactive metals. We wrapped each and every item in a anti-static bag, and then evacuated the bags before boxing them up. We used normal cardboard boxes for boxing.
So.. stay away from color printer output (they degrade very fast) and any pseudo-soft plastics like polycarbonate (CD/DVD) because they'll break down too. Black and white prints are the safest picture types. You might spray your paper products with a baking-soda bicarbonate solution and then dry out.
good luck!
What about an oil barrel? :D
You'll need it in 2037!
Plus, you could sell it for a few thousand dollars and buy vintage stuff from 2012
paper has been around for a LONG time. There is even paper that is made to last long. Bit more expensive, but it will last much longer.
For 25, just use normal paper. Write whatever you want. e.g. how you feel about people, politics, the future, your state of mind. Write about your dreams and your thoughts of now.
Once you have printed it, seal it in plastic. You can put a LOT of information on it and it will be very personal as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Instead of storing data in the box directly, where you then rely on media retaining viability over 25 years you could always strongly encrypt the data you would like to logically store in the box and then write (or etch in stone, whatever) the decryption key and store that human readable quantity of data in the box and then maintain the cipher-text outside the box in a redundant distributed fashion over multiple generations of media. Of course I fail to see what the advantage of keeping the data secret over the time period would obtain, and it prevents transcoding to new file formats, so I'd just suggest keeping copies of the data as you would any data you want to have in 25 years (not locked in a box).
You see, physical objects are placed into a time capsule because they would normally deteriorate and not be archived properly if they weren't removed from the harsh existence of everyday life. Data however doesn't work like that, neglect is the biggest problem and hence a time capsule is not a good means of preserving data the way it is for preserving objects.
Make it a science project.
Put identical data on one of every type of storage technology and see which survives. In 25 years you will have a very interesting case study while being nostalgic about the data storage media used back when you were young.
If they all fail then laugh at how silly you were all those years ago and how you should have done x instead.
I use it for everything I need to store; backups of tax returns, keeps veggies crisp for decades, and turns incompetent employees into wonderful conversation pieces.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It is not a trivial request to ask how to make things survive a 25 year isolated containment, even if you solder or weld the outer container shut and it stays sealed.
Batteries, capacitors, wood, paint, plastics, bugs in the wood, polymer coatings can all outgas. Some plastics naturally keep changing very slowly as their molecular cross linking changes and plasticizers move to the surface.
Those outgassing chemicals can wind up interacting, or corroding if you wish, the other item's materials and you don't get what you think you will in 25 years.
If you actually put a battery in their you can get other reactions occurring very slowly as the battery discharges. Don't forget that many electronics use a milliamp or so to keep some functions ON all the time, even though the devices is supposed to be turned off. Batteries are notorious for having their liquids eventually leaking out.
When you handle all the items, getting ready to load the time capsule, there are going to be all sorts of finger oils and millions of bacteria that are on each piece you put in the container, plus what is on the inside of the container and its seal materials. Some bacteria are anaerobic, so just because there is no Oxygen (if you load the capsule with Nitrogen), doesn't mean there won't be live bacteria in there.
Lastly, if your container is totally sealed and outgassing raised the internal pressure, then chemical reactions can occur more rapidly.
Yeah, I've got hundreds of self-burned DVD's from the early 2000's that I had to trash because they're unreadable now. I wouldn't consider that being a real long-term solution. Flash memory (in some form) will probably be okay, though. Even the oldest flash drives I have (32-64 whole MB's of storage! WOW!!) are still readable today. They're useless due to their size, of course, but they still work and the data is still on them.
Now, if the USB interface disappears in the next 25 years you could be screwed, but I somehow doubt they will be entirely gone in 25 years, considering the availability of serial ports still in place today that predate USB by decades themselves.
I did some temp work at a document storage warehouse repacking some damaged file boxes. One thing I learned is that rubber bands have a useful life of about two years. After about five years, all rubber and elastic bands had failed, and worst of all, after about eight years, the remnants of rubber bands had all turned into a permanent solid glue. Lesson learned: no rubber bands allowed for long-term storage.
Check for read errors, .. .
find /media/CDROM -type f -exec cat \; >/dev/null
or something. CDs have a large amount of redundancy, but maybe it's degraded sufficiently
Get a container which is airtight and watertight. Pump it full of nitrogen.
I disagree with CDs and DVDs not being readable. Compact discs are a mature technology. As long as they're kept someplace cool, dark and dry they should be fine and readable when the container is opened in twenty five years. No idea if memory sticks or hard drives would survive.
Cheaper, better option: any container, filled with large ziplock bags. I have bought 2.5 gallon bags at Walmart so they're easy to find, and they're very cheap, pennies per bag. I bought some to hold a 1 gallon gas can where I did not want the gas to possibly leak out and was hoping to prevent any gas fumes. It worked, the bags are completely air-tight. And you can always double or triple bag your items. However ziplock bags are not puncture proof, so you will want a container outside the bags if you're concerned about something possibly cutting through the bag.
But I would recommend you include whatever player you need within the chest along with an AC charger. US AC plugs have not changed since electricity became standard. Media player does not need to be high-tech, any old laptop will do as long as you can remove the battery and store it separately or remove from chest completely so if it does corrode or possibly explode it won't damage the laptop. I would put the data on the laptop hard drive and also on SD cards or thumbdrives since they should be fine with no moving parts and costing about 50 cents a gigabyte they're very cheap.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The cake should last edible for a 100 years, if it's made correctly.
Pressed music CD's DVDs are not the same as the ones you use to burn. Pressed CDs/DVDs are not made of the same materials as those used for burning, and will last decades if properly taken care of.
For CDs/DVDs used for burning, the first couple generations of these (when you were paying 2-5$ A DISC) were made of much thicker material and most of the stuff I burnt in the 90s on these types of discs are still readable today. However, with cheap discs came cheap/slim material, which are greatly affected by disc rot. I have some CDs and DVDs that I burnt just 2-3 years ago that are unreadable due to disc rot. If you hold them up to a light you can see the holes.
That being said, you can buy archival DVDs & CDs. The companies claim they will last 100 years if stored properly. I use them to back up my pictures. Those should be sufficient for the time capsule. Burn 3 or more copies to ensure greater chances of being to read everything.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Take everything you want included as information (as opposed to toys, etc) and incorporate in into a book. Send a copy to the Library of Congress, and let them deal with the maintenance. Include a stone tablet in the box with the ISBN number chiseled into it so you can find the book when the box is opened.
Stone (everyone)
Intaglio bronze plates (Romans, especially for Senate documents)
Clay tablets (Babylonians)
Parchment (Everyone)
Acid free rag paper (Chinese and later the europeans)
Linen - required in many town halls for registered surveys and plats (last hundred years)
Mylar - also required for many town halls for registered surveys (ever since the invention of mylar drawing media).
We have clay tablets from thousands of years ago.
We have parchment documents from hundreds of years ago
We have paper documents from hundreds of years ago
Linen became popular when it was machine made - it is extremely durable and will last hundreds of years if given even minimal care.
Mylar can last thousands of years even after being abused.
One of the most indestructible and compact ways of storing data is punched mylar tape. It can be dumped in a bucket of oil in the shop, wiped off, and sent through the reader. It's simple to make a reader too. Herman Hollerith would have understood immediately how to read punched mylar tape had he been alive to see it. Mylar is also very stable, and not prone to rot. I would like to see the look on a wandering novice monk's face in a few thousand years unearthing an earthenware container packed with dessicant and spools of mylar and all of it entirely readable mechanically or electronically with simple tools.
It would be a new twist on the Sacred Shopping List.
And here we're merely talking about 25 years. Even a paperback written on fast-yellowing paper will survive that, given an airtight and light tight container and a pack or two of silica gel. Photographs on archival paper would be good. Microfiche would be excellent. Anything on an acid-free paper. Basically anything that can be read mechanically or optically including QR codes printed out on acid free paper with good ink.
Things to not store for 25 years and expect to be able to read: Any electronic format that depends on a proprietary reader in a proprietary format. That is *guaranteed* bit rot.
--
BMO
The elephant in the room that nobody is discussing... what's your container going to be made of? How are you going to seal it and keep it sealed? These are non-trivial questions. Containers react with the materials inside and corrode both inside and out. Seals dry out. Etc... etc...
There's a lot more to this than just the items inside. The container has to maintain its integrity too.
Check for read errors, ...
find /media/CDROM -type f -exec cat \; >/dev/null
or something. CDs have a large amount of redundancy, but maybe it's degraded sufficiently
If you have read access to the block device (ie. root or group read access), an even faster method:
dd if=/dev/scd0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k
(or equivalent CD block device; check with 'mount | grep cdrom' after you've mounted the CD filesystem).
This does a full linear block-level read from the CD device and avoids the seeking that would be necessary when scanning at the filesystem level.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Mitt is the creepy guy in your fraternity who thought it would be a good idea to assault fans of the opposing team because he thinks that's a prank (no it isn't) and that it's funny (no, it's a crime). Then he had his obligatory Mormon wedding and produced 5 clones of himself. If he runs healthcare there won't be a line for bypass surgery. There will be a footrace. He'll have a jolly good time watching grandma grab her chest and fall 10 feet short of the finish.
Laser printer pages don't stick together.
I have banker's boxes full of documents (mostly code listings) circa 1986 printed on the first HP laser jet. No sticking problem.
The only sticking I've seen in laser printing is from early models (circa 1975) of IBM 3800 laser printers (mainframe laser printers) which printed so fast the thermoplastic never had time to cool before it was pressed down by the sheet above. Print jobs directly off the back end would sometimes stick together. This was solved in a few months by a toner change.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1. Keep it low tech:
Assuming you graduated college at 21, you'll be around 71, you won't be that interested in figuring out high-tech stuff. It won't be long until the tech we have now is obsolete, because the rate of change continues to accelerate. Try finding a punch card reader these days.
Print stuff out on paper, regular paper works fine for only 25 years. Add a desiccant, and pump in nitrogen or argon if you can.
2. Redundancy:
Many of you will be dead and many will have lost their memory.
Print out a copy for everyone. Everybody gets one. Store in metal boxes clearly labeled on the outside so you don't have to keep opening it to see what it is.
3. Locators:
Include a list of everybody who gets a box in the box. Include personal identifiers (full names, DOBs) so you can track people down on the Internet (or whatever it is called 25 years from now.)
You may find 25 years from now that there are already records or copies of whatever you put in the box* but the greatest treasure will be locating your old buddies.
*Most people who open time capsules find old newspapers. The exact same newspapers which are also in storage in the newspaper office down the street. Probably when you open your box in 25 years you can find everything you put inside still on eBay.
Good luck!
Liquor doesn't improve in the bottle- only in the barrel. Wine improves with age because of interactions between sugars, yeast and/or bacteria. The alcohol content in liquor is too high for bacteria or yeast to survive. That said, I'd consider putting in a couple of bottles of a hardy red wine or a port. It should age gracefully over 25 years.
Well, not too bad,
dg@major:~$ dd if=/dev/sr0 of=/dev/null bs=1024k
dd: reading `/dev/sr0': Input/output error
580+1 records in
580+1 records out
608698368 bytes (609 MB) copied, 179.877 s, 3.4 MB/s
[32062.556698] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Unhandled sense code
[32062.556704] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32062.556707] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[32062.556710] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32062.556712] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[32062.556717] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32062.556720] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[32062.556723] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] CDB:
[32062.556725] Read(10): 28 00 00 04 89 00 00 00 30 00
[32062.556736] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1188864
[32062.556742] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297216
[32062.556748] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297217
[32062.556756] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297218
[32062.556758] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297219
[32062.556761] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297220
[32062.556764] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297221
[32062.556766] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297222
[32062.556769] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297223
[32062.556771] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297224
[32062.556774] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297225
[32069.527607] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Unhandled sense code
[32069.527613] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32069.527616] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[32069.527619] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32069.527621] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[32069.527626] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32069.527629] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[32069.527632] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] CDB:
[32069.527634] Read(10): 28 00 00 04 89 00 00 00 02 00
[32069.527646] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1188864
[32069.527650] quiet_error: 38 callbacks suppressed
[32069.527653] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297216
[32069.527658] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297217
[32076.499895] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Unhandled sense code
[32076.499901] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32076.499904] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[32076.499907] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32076.499909] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
[32076.499914] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0]
[32076.499917] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error
[32076.499920] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] CDB:
[32076.499922] Read(10): 28 00 00 04 89 00 00 00 02 00
[32076.499934] end_request: I/O error, dev sr0, sector 1188864
[32076.499938] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297216
[32076.499943] Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 297217
so I'd say it looks like it's found at least 2 bad logical blocks on the CD, and I suspect it eventually
retried it OK, because a df on the mounted CD shows 581M which MB v MiB is equivalent to the 609 figure
that came out of the dd - so I reckon it eventually (after a try or two) read the lot.
Dave
Why don't you do an experiment and put assorted items in a sealed container for 25 years and then open it and tell us how well things stored?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.