Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Store Data In Hard Copy?

First time accepted submitter bmearns writes "I have some simple plain-text files (e.g., account information) that I want to print on paper and store in my firebox as a backup to my backup. What's the best way to encode the data for print so that it can later be restored to digital form? I've considered just printing it as text and using OCR to recover it. The upsides are that it's easy and I can even access the information without a computer if necessary. Downsides are data density, no encryption, no error correction, and how well does OCR work, anyway? Another option is printing 2D barcodes. Upsides are density, error correction, I could encrypt the data before printing. Downsides are that I'll need to split it up into multiple barcodes due to maximum capacity of popular barcode formats, and I can't access the data without a computer. Did I miss any options? What do slashdotters suggest?"

Comments

Text, but why?

[jfdavis668]

It would be far easier to scan a lot of text back to digital form than read numerous bar codes. Converting the text to useful data may be the more difficult part. But why would you want to go through this hassle?

Re:Text, but why?

[Z00L00K]

And as long as a decent font for OCR is used - like OCR-B then it should be feasible.

The reason for doing it - well, if you want to preserve something for a few decades then it's printing on lint paper and using ink that can survive a long time. The latter is probably the hardest since nobody really knows which kind of ink used in computer printers that's able to survive for centuries.

My suspicion is that the dot matrix printers are better off than lasers and inkjets.

Re:Text, but why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, the answer is simple, there is no standard for Digital backup. zero zip. There are only two methods of time test backup.
1) Text printed on no acid paper.
2) Microphish. or film.

I suggest you print it with ocr readable characters with a pigment based ink. If you are that serious about backup, take it to a printer and have them printed with good ink on the best paper you can find. store the copies in two separate locations.

Remember every one, there is NO standard on digital backup medium.

Text printed correctly on zero acid paper or film is the only time test way.

IMHO

Re:Text, but why?

[Hans Lehmann]

How many accounts can anyone have that they actually need to have bar codes or some other such nonsense to be able to regain entry to them? Print out you account information, user names, passwords, etc., and put the printout in your fire-resistant safe. If your house burns down, or some other calamity happens, and you need to regain access to all of your accounts, then you'll just re-enter tha passwords for each one. This can't possibly be more complicated than setting up some OCR / Barcode / Rube Goldberg solution.

Re:Text, but why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

No need to worry about ink: even the cheapest and nastiest laser printers use toner, and a mixture of thermoplastic and carbon black thermally fused to your paper isn't going anywhere(in fact, if you use lousy enough paper, some lucky future archeology intern may have the... unmixed pleasure... of picking the little plastic character glyphs out of the pile of dust, trying to keep them in their original order!).

His data-restore needs probably don't extend to truly epic lengths in any case, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Re:Text, but why?

[Z00L00K]

I have already noted that laser prints can come off in flakes from the paper it's supposed to be attached to leaving unreadable text, and that's only after a few years.

Re:Text, but why?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I agree - introducing needless complexity is always dumb. However in the case where he needs to get at this data backup, re-entering everything by hand is tedious and unnecessary.

Scan all the physical documents to PDF or whatever format you prefer. On a Mac? Keep your passwords in the Keychain. On a PC? Windows 7 has a similar feature, and there are third-party encrypted password wallets that work with older versions of Windows. On Linux? There are myriad ways to accomplish this.

Copy it all to an encrypted hard drive. Tape the password to the drive, and lock that in your safety deposit box. Alternatively, just lock the password in the box, and keep the drive at a family member's residence.

Re:Text, but why?

[similar_name]

I'm going to uuencode my hard drive and then print it out just to be safe.

Re:Text, but why?

[bmearns]

Maybe I missed something: Why encrypt the hard drive if I'm going to tape the password to it?

The whole point of using a hardcopy is to avoid a number of problems with digital copies, the biggest of which is that harddisks, flash memory, and optical discs all suffer in terms of data longevity. They can also be damaged relatively easily, and, as someone mentioned above, data and hardware formats go obsolete and may be practically inaccessible in relatively short order.

Re:Text, but why?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It would be far easier to scan a lot of text back to digital form than read numerous bar codes.

If I recall correctly, there's a format for bar codes that put them (vertically squashed) under the characters or words that they represent.

Re:Text, but why?

[Jane Q. Public]

"The reason for doing it - well, if you want to preserve something for a few decades then it's printing on lint paper and using ink that can survive a long time. The latter is probably the hardest since nobody really knows which kind of ink used in computer printers that's able to survive for centuries."

I don't know about "lint" paper, but you definitely want acid-free paper.

Regardless, a definitive answer for long-term paper storage won't come from Slashdot. Ask the Universities, who insist that they get a copy of every thesis paper for their archives, printed in such a way that it WILL last for centuries. They'd know the best practices.

Re:Text, but why?

[fermion]

I would think QR codes might do it. You can format it as a page of data, then a QR code on the page to encode the data in human readable for. Or just print pages of QR codes. I assume that data will be exported in XML or something similiar so the computer will now what the data means when it is restoring it from text. For compression or security, maybe consider creating a archive of the data with a password, then converting that to hexadecimal text file. That file can be converted in QR codes and printed. You of course trading security for security. The coded QR codes will not be human readable, but if any codes are messed up, then you lose the data. The plain text with qr codes are human readable, so not secure, but if a QR code is messed up, then it would be possible to get the data back from the plain text printout.

Re:Text, but why?

[hedwards]

I'm guessing that "Lint" paper is linen paper, similar to what USD are printed on, but probably somewhat lesser quality. They are indeed quite durable.

However, asking a library, or the local archivist is probably the best idea. If you're in a decent sized city, there's a good chance that the city itself has it's own archives and somebody there that would know what kind of paper and printing to do.

Re:Text, but why?

[hedwards]

Well, if you really want it to last permanently, the best option would be to engrave it into copper plates that would survive damn near everything short of an acid bath or direct hit from a nuke.

But, I'd be curious as to what is so important that it would need to be able to survive for thousands of years, just buried in a pit.

Re:Text, but why?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Maybe I missed something: Why encrypt the hard drive if I'm going to tape the password to it?

That was a brain fart on my part. Initially I had typed the part about having the drive and password in two separate locations, then thought "wait, it's a safety deposit box - they can be together" without taking the next obvious step.

The whole point of using a hardcopy is to avoid a number of problems with digital copies, the biggest of which is that harddisks, flash memory, and optical discs all suffer in terms of data longevity. They can also be damaged relatively easily, and, as someone mentioned above, data and hardware formats go obsolete and may be practically inaccessible in relatively short order.

At least some subset of this data won't be static - it'll have to be maintained. At least I hope he's not keeping the same passwords for decades! In that case it seemed silly to me to treat this as a separate problem from the fact (not mentioned by him) that people should keep a separate offsite backup of all their data. He should be doing that as well - so why not kill two birds with one stone?

Re:Text, but why?

[Anne Thwacks]

Floppy fdisks my last for years, but the data on them surely doesnt.

If you want long life: 8-hole paper tape is good. It is humean readable (with a struggle), but the data density is crap.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

This is silly.

Without a computer he will have no need of this data. It's account data! What good is that without a computer? (Left unsaid is what kind of accounts we are talking about. If computer accounts you simply don't need it. If financial accounts you might temporarily need to work with paper till you restore the computers).

Why not a second or third or fourth backup at a different location all in common computer readable form?
Planning to scan in paper is far more complex than just a conventional backup on common media with a copy off site.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

Exactly.
The whole premise is flawed.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

I have already noted that laser prints can come off in flakes from the paper it's supposed to be attached to leaving unreadable text, and that's only after a few years.

Can come off, but in actual use doesn't.

Paper laying around loose, maybe. But l have laserjet printed output bound in binders since the first laser printers became available on common shelf storage which is not exhibiting any degradation over all these years. And, no, the paper isn't rotting out either, just to head off that old fud.

Re:Text, but why?

[plover]

Sadly, many of my old dot matrix and teletype printouts have faded as much as any other liquid ink I've used. It depends entirely on the ink in the ribbon. The liquid ink present in ordinary ribbons was often of wildly varying quality, and most people who bought those ribbons in bulk sought out the cheapest possible ribbons. I wouldn't bet on their longevity.

Laser printed pages consist of carbon in plastic, and there's no reason they shouldn't last a century or more, as long as certain conditions are met: if the toner is properly fused to the paper, if the paper doesn't degrade beneath it, and if the facing page doesn't adhere to the toner.

1. Your printer should have the right temperature set in the fuser, and that's probably not even adjustable to you. If the toner comes out dusty or smeary, it's too cool. If it comes out brown and crispy, it's too hot :-) You should recognize it immediately if the print quality is poor.

2. Store the paper properly. Heat is your enemy: don't let it get too hot, and don't store anything you want preserved in sunlight. Don't let it get damp - mold will destroy paper. Don't use crappy paper that will disintegrate - acid free is always the recommendation for long term storage. Horizontal stacks of paper will apply a lot of pressure to the sheets near the bottom of the stack, vertical hanging files reduce this pressure.

3. Watch out for printed sheets facing other printed sheets, (like double sided printing) where the toner from bottom side of the upper sheet can stick to the toner on the top side of the lower sheet. A horizontal stack of paper, especially in a hot environment, will apply a lot of pressure that cause the toners to fuse together where they touch. I've also had problems with toner adhering to vinyl sheets commonly found in 3 ring binders or binder covers.

Re:Text, but why?

[drkim]

This is silly.

Without a computer he will have no need of this data.

Agreed! Assuming he just wants to get back to 'where he was' on a computer, doing a massive printout and eventual OCR is lame. Besides, paper is flammable. So assuming that after whatever disaster (fire, flood, zombies...) you still can buy a new, working computer:

Just burn everything you want to an Archival Grade Gold DVD-R (rated to 100 years, I assume once you're dead you don't care) and keep it in a fire safe.

Once the 'disaster' happens, you just reload the data on to your new computer.

http://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/professional-optical/archival-grade-gold-dvd-r/

Re:Text, but why?

[whoever57]

Why not a second or third or fourth backup at a different location all in common computer readable form?

I use two Luks-encrypted backups that I can take and leave at work. Becasue it is encrypted, I don't need to worry about it being compromised at work or in transit. I have two of these so that one is always out of my house.

Another location could be a safe-deposit box at a bank. Remember that, even if it is destroyed in a fire, it doesn't matter because the chance of all my copies and backups being destroyed at the same time is very, very low.

Re:Text, but why?

[__aaltlg1547]

Do a screen shot of it, overlay it with a picture of you and your girlfriend or boyfriend having sex and upload it to a revenge porn site, then publicly complain about it having been uploaded without your consent. That guarantees it will be available from any computer for at least 100 years.

Re:Text, but why?

[oobayly]

Funnily enough, I really struggled to get open source OCR software to read OCR-B fonts with any accuracy. They worked better with Arial.

I even tried rendering a PDF to PNG and the trying to read that. All it was was some base64 encoded data with no punctuation, thinking about it, maybe that was the problem.

Re:Text, but why?

[__aaltlg1547]

For account numbers and passwords, this is a good solution. But IMO, it isn't a good enough solution. A better solution is print them twice. Put one copy in a waterproof, fireproof safe. Put the other copy in a safe deposit bank across town. This is to protect you from the possibility that your whole house and all your computers become inaccessible while you are away from home. (http://www.capitalbay.com/headline/339999-as-landslide-swallows-five-homes-in-wealthy-northern-california-neighborhood-residents-struggle-to-find-the-root-cause.html), (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/07/07/199688745/runaway-train-explosion-still-ablaze-in-quebec).

And since you've got that safe deposit box, it's a great place to put original birth certificates, copies of insurance policies, property deeds, auto titles, and a SSD containing a backup of important data from your computer. A monthly trip to the bank to swap out your backup drive is also a good opportunity to check if your paper docs are up to date. If you don't have very much data that you think needs backing up, you can use a smaller, cheaper USB drive.

Re:Text, but why?

[plopez]

You forgot clay tablets as a time tested backup method.

Re:Text, but why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It can actually be a risk, if the fuser doesn't get the toner hot enough, long enough, to fully infiltrate the paper(without burning it, obviously, which is presumably what drives conservatism on that score).

Very high humidity at print time can be a problem: It's rarely this dramatic; but I've seen a few cases where paper, left unattended and non climate controlled through a ghastly humid summer, to the point where it starts to get vaguely limp, billowing steam as it passed through the fuser stage. An interesting spectacle; but, needless to say, not good for adhesion(the characters themselves, while delicate, were largely intact, and could be poured off the paper), since the enthalpy of vaporization of water was sinking significant heat at point of contact. Sometimes the classier laser printers have humidity sensors in the print path to compensate; but air conditioning still isn't a bad idea, if only for the poor humans.

Re:Text, but why?

[egcagrac0]

This, but instead of "overlay", do some real steganography.

Re:Text, but why?

[Tool Man]

Actually, fire safes are a lot better for paper than CD/DVD media, which will be destroyed faster than paper chars.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

Actually, fire safes are a lot better for paper than CD/DVD media, which will be destroyed faster than paper chars.

So wrap the DVD with 4 inches of paper on all sides.

You can buy fire safes that are rated for 1, 2, ore 3 hours of fire which will maintain internal temperatures no hotter than 125F and humidity no less than 80%. But expect to pay big. North of $8000 bucks at wholesale.

Relying on "fire safes" that are stored on-site is pretty silly anyway unless you have a concrete building with sprinklers.
Given the ease of moving it off site, the cheapest solution is off-site backup.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

But when you see that at print time, why would anyone expect that to survive?
Steam coming out of your printer is a pretty significant clue if you ask me.

I have boxes of normal 20 pound office bond (nothing special) circa 1985 containing old listings. Its as crisp and intact as ever, and it got no special treatment, simply sitting in boxes on the shelf. I have continuous forms from old IBM mainframe 3800 printers that looks rattier. Probably the paper. But even these show no signs of print flaking off.

I've simply never seen print flaking off.
I've seen it wipe off with just finger pressure, but that was because the fuser roll had died and was no longer heating.

Re:Text, but why?

[pwizard2]

Why not stamp the text into copper or aluminum tablets? Far less breakable than clay or stone. Copper eventually gets that green patina but it should still be readable if you stamp the words deep enough.

Re:Text, but why?

[Tool Man]

Oh sure, this shouldn't be the common use case for backups. There's no reason it can't be a useful alternative. Personally, I am tempted to mail postcards covered in optar-printed labels all over the place, just to drive people nuts. Some of them would have to contain Goatse images, others, possibly random data.

Re:Text, but why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not saying that you would, that little anecdote was there mostly because it was rather striking when it happened(and, indeed, we were able to simply tilt the paper and pour the letters off, so we didn't exactly 'trust' the output). My point was merely that, while rare under proper conditions(and why my original post recommended toner over ink) it is certainly possible for fusing to fail.

Re:Text, but why?

[inquist]

Well, some clay tablets have survived intact and readable for thousands of years. (Cuneiform)
I suspect ceramics are less likely to react chemically with any given environment.

Re:Text, but why?

[Lawrence_Bird]

I have hard copies of programs printed in the early 80s on DEC la-120s as well as genuine line printers. All are prefectly legible today and not really faded at all, at least not the ink. The paper has yellowed a bit.

Re:Text, but why?

[Macgrrl]

That says to me the original printer had a faulty fuser unit.

Re:Text, but why?

[whit3]

No need to worry about ink: even the cheapest and nastiest laser printers use toner, and a mixture of thermoplastic and carbon black thermally fused to your paper isn't going anywhere...

Carbon black does go away (turns to carbon monoxide) over a few centuries; the run-of-the-mill toner, though, uses Fe3O4/Fe2O3 pigment (it's slightly magnetic). So does classic oak-gall ink for quill pens, and the longevity is good.

Re:Text, but why?

[adolf]

I once made some business cards on a Laserjet III, and shoved a stack of them into my wallet. The printing chipped off pretty quickly, but then maybe the old (though new-ish at the time) printer wasn't able to compensate properly for the heavy stock. (Subsequent iterations of my business card have been wet-offset printed, which of course works fine.)

As a more recent anecdote, I get my paychecks mailed to me from a town 40 miles away, packaged in plain double-window envelopes. There is often an image transferred to the inside of the plastic windows, and that's just from being handled and bundled for a day or three.

And nevermind how easily a bit of soft vinyl can grab onto and lift toner, just sitting together in close contact.

All that said, though: Printing documents and putting them in the firesafe, where they're not jostled, the humidity is reasonably constant, it is always dark, and they're amongst their laser-printed peers instead of stuck against plastic or being abused in a sweaty wallet? Probably absolutely fine, at least within the confines of the lifetime of the Asker. :)

I'd print it all out using Paperback, along with a human-readable copy, put it all inside of a manilla envelope or file folder, and call it a day.

Re:Text, but why?

[adolf]

I use two Luks-encrypted backups that I can take and leave at work. Becasue it is encrypted, I don't need to worry about it being compromised at work or in transit. I have two of these so that one is always out of my house.

It seems that it might be better to have at least three backups, that way you can have one that is local to the data, one that is in transit, and one that it remote. At no time must all three copies be in the same place at the same time in normal use.

Because with just two, you have times when all backups (all both of them) are in the same place at the same time. Which means trouble, potentially, since whatever event capable of destroying one will most assuredly also destroy the other. ...unless you count the data itself as being the third copy, which is a lot like more like trusting RAID than a good backup regimen: A live, spinning filesystem is not a backup, and can blow up at any time.

(And, with an extra backup set, you automatically get more versioning, which is often a nice thing to have.)

Re:Text, but why?

[adolf]

125F? Why 125F? Is that temperature magic, somehow? I mean: CDs in my car don't die in temperatures well above 125F on a hot sunny day with the windows closed... Even as a test, not long after I got a CD burner, I kept a few CDs on the rear deck of my car, unprotected, for a couple of years. They worked fine when I declared that the experiment was over.

Would a magnetic tape survive? Maybe, depending on the Curie point. But CDs aren't magnetic tape, and I strongly suspect that the 125F temperature is based upon the fragility of rust -- not compact discs or DVDs.

A friend of mine's house burned once. (It was a disaster for his belongings, but he and his family were fine, and the house recovered after a thorough gutting. Not so much luck for the dog and the fish.)

In his office was a wire rack of CDs in jewel cases: Data CDs, audio CDs, whatever CDs.

Many of these had the paper liner inserts badly degraded, and the jewel cases melted into strange shapes. The fire department had created a vent in his computer room, with the goal of exhausting the heat of the fire through that space: I have no idea how hot it was there, but just down the stairs from there the fire marshal said that things were hot enough for the couch to have burned by flashover alone.

The housings for his monitors and computers were limp and sagging.

The CDs themselves? Fine. All of them. A bit of soap and water to clean the soot off, and they worked great. Every single one of them worked fine. I started the process of duping them on my then-high-tech Plextor gear as an archival measure, only to realize that there was no need: There weren't any reported errors, and the reads were fast (indicative of a very low BER).

I stopped working on duping them, bought him some new jewel cases, and just cleaned up the rest and gave them back to him. No problems.

UL standards for fire safes designed to keep paper are 350 degrees F and rated in hours, and the glass transition temperature of polycarbonate is about 297 F. Simply cut the hour-rating in half, and you've got a conservative estimate for what it will take to keep CDs readable in a fire.

Proof? Easy. Fire up the oven, set it to an actual 290-or-so degrees, put a CD on the rack supported by the center ring, wait for awhile, and see if it's readable.

Anyone with a few extra blanks and a few hours time can test it easily enough.

Re:Text, but why?

[plover]

Bar codes may be a risky choice. Do you know if barcodes will even be in use in 2043? Will you still be able to buy a barcode scanner, or will everything be marked differently? RFID might get cheap enough to take over, or OCR readers might render barcodes obsolete. The formats you are thinking of are also not very dense, meaning you can't stuff a lot of information into them. 2D barcodes such as PDF-417 are much more dense, but lose that visible correspondence to text.

Remember, 30 years is half of forever in the computing world. Think about the changes that have happened since 1983: do you still have a 5-1/4" floppy disk reader? Do you still have a proprietary keyboard connector? What about an ST-506 compatible hard disk drive, and an 8-bit ISA bus drive controller card? Do you still have any 8 bit ISA buses to plug the card into? Any Hollerith punched card readers, or punched paper tape readers? Do you even have any greenbar printouts from 1983 still hanging around?

Some interfaces are longer lived than others. RS-232 has been around since at least the 1960s. UPC barcodes have been around since the 1970s, but are being slowly replaced by GS1 DataBar barcodes. Code 3 of 9 came around in the early 1980s and has remained viable. But people are slowly recognizing the troubles with barcodes: they're not human readable (therefore they're forgeable by criminals and unverifiable and untrustworthy to ordinary humans), they require a clean and undamaged image area, and many readers still require alignment of the barcode and scanner to read. Most businesses really want to get rid of barcodes and move to something like RFID tags (which have many advantages,) but because barcodes are still cheap as dirt, they haven't yet been replaced.

Honestly, I think this guy should look to printing his data in an OCR-friendly font and skip the barcode idea altogether.

Re:Text, but why?

[plover]

30 years ago you probably would have stored your long-term data on a 5-1/4" floppy. You also might have punched it to paper tape, or written it to a 9-track magnetic tape. You could even have recorded it on a cassette deck. Which of those technologies does your daily machine still read today?

So, in 2043, which interfacing technologies will your daily machine still have that are compatible with today's standards? USB? CF or SD cards? SATA? What about Lightning, or Firewire? HDMI? DVD or BluRay?

In thirty years I hope things are so advanced as to be almost unrecognizable by today's standards. If not, we haven't made things as good as they could be.

Besides, he doesn't have a lot of text. Volume isn't his problem, permanence is.

Re:Text, but why?

[adolf]

Relying on "fire safes" that are stored on-site is pretty silly anyway unless you have a concrete building with sprinklers.
Given the ease of moving it off site, the cheapest solution is off-site backup.

Oh, and also: I rely on a paid fire department staffed 24x7 to provide sprinklers on-demand. Houses here never, ever burn to the ground, and the blaze is always contained in short order. These guys get from dead-sleep to trucks-rolling in a couple of minutes, and my house itself is 3 minutes from the main station: That's a long time in terms of general destruction, but not in terms of a typical fire safe.

It's not cheap, but I pay for it whether I use it or not. I might as well rely on it.

(Or, if data is the only important thing in the house and other belongings are simply material, a sprinkler head installed above the fire safe is a safe bet. PEX is cheap and easy, and sprinkler heads are cheap as well. And once it's paid for, it's done. But continually moving data off-site is cumulative and never-ending.)

Re:Text, but why?

[plover]

My school administrators bought cheaper ink than yours. :-) Either that, or we reused the ribbons long past their service life. I still have a punched card (from my father) where the ink across the top has faded completely, and the only remaining information is in the holes.

Re:Text, but why?

[icebike]

You seem to have a vehement argument with someone who manufacturers fire safes and advertises them on the Internet.

They chose 125. Maybe you should write them your diatribe via email?

Re:Text, but why?

[adolf]

Eh?

I seem to have a vehement argument toward using CDs and perhaps DVDs stored in normal firesafes.

But more to the point: Maybe you should realize that this is Slashdot, where free thought is both encouraged and argued against using science and experience, and FUD is actively dismantled. I'd have thought, given your 5-digit UID, that you'd have understood that by now.

Maybe you should give your UID back to the person you bought it from?

Re:Text, but why?

[Jstlook]

Or, for the frugal worry-wort .. consider building your own. Half an inch of sheetrock is designed to be more or less "fire-safe" for an hour (correct me if I'm wrong), so building a small room with say four or six layers of sheetrock (properly applied), ought to be sufficient for a 3-4 hour fire. You may not get idea humidity conditions (is that really an issue for your typical CD/DVD media?), but you'll also pay 10 cents on the dollar compared to the big fire safes.

Re:Text, but why?

[drkim]

You can buy fire safes that are rated for 1, 2, ore 3 hours of fire which will maintain internal temperatures no hotter than 125F

This would work well with the archival DVDs, since the disk is made of Polycarbonate (thermoplastic polymers) that has a melting point of 311F (155C)

While it's true that paper will ignite up at 424.4F (218C) it starts to yellow and char starting down at 302F (150C) which could interfere with OCR.

There's no reason he couldn't burn an archival DVD and print a paper hard copy; then keep them both in the safe.

Re:Text, but why?

[DeBaas]

Why not stamp the text into copper or aluminum tablets? .

I stamp text into my tablet every day, all it leaves behind is fingerprints.....

Re:Text, but why?

[Xest]

It's not just fire proofing that's the problem but heat proofing too.

We had a "fire" safe in a building that burnt down once and the hard drive stored inside was useless because much of the plastics used had melted and the paper had browned to the point of pretty much uselessness.

Luckily it was a pretty pointless site that had nothing of value (it was when I worked public sector, so you could really argue that about most sites there) but it certainly taught a lesson not to rely on onsite backups no matter how good your fire safe is. It'll stop shit catching fire, but it wont stop it being cooked to the point of uselessness so unless you're keeping something safe with an extremely high melting point then just store multiple redundant copies securely off-site.

Re:Text, but why?

[Jstlook]

True .. Sheetrock only maintains an internal temperature of 100 C until the stuff completely dries up. Three things though - I *did* mention this is the po' mans' version of a fire safe, I suggested only keeping things that could withstand temperature (i.e. not actually melt in 500 degree heat, thus the glass comment), and I'd say at that point if you're worried .. go the extra step and bury the po' fire safe in the ground. Dirt is a great insulator. Admittedly you have to deal with flooding issues then, so double up! One in the attic, one in the cellar, and one off-site (sneaker-net, not cloud. If everything goes to pot, do you *really* think you've got internet access?)

Re:Text, but why?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Bar codes may be a risky choice. Do you know if barcodes will even be in use in 2043? Will you still be able to buy a barcode scanner, or will everything be marked differently?

You'd use any 2D imaging device of your choice. A digital camera would suffice.

Remember, 30 years is half of forever in the computing world. Think about the changes that have happened since 1983: do you still have a 5-1/4" floppy disk reader? Do you still have a proprietary keyboard connector? What about an ST-506 compatible hard disk drive, and an 8-bit ISA bus drive controller card? Do you still have any 8 bit ISA buses to plug the card into? Any Hollerith punched card readers, or punched paper tape readers? Do you even have any greenbar printouts from 1983 still hanging around?

In case of optically read paper-based media, you really don't need any of those. Please notice that I've been talking about printed text with helper barcodes. You can read it with your eyes, it's just that the barcodes help with the OCR process.

Re:Text, but why?

[baegucb]

I'd recommend what wikipedia recommends for archiving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Management_Policy#Data_preservation_techniques_and_procedures

Re:Text, but why?

[olau]

You mean, like, morse code? What would do the morsing with? Oh, wait.

Re:Text, but why?

[ultrasawblade]

+1 Paperbak

http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/

Re:Text, but why?

[ultrasawblade]

Barcodes aren't that difficult to decode. If you can't get a barcode reader, a program could likely easily decode it from a scanned image.

Re:Text, but why?

[whit3]

30 years ago I was using a 3 1/2" floppy drive. I still have one to this day. Plugs right into a USB port. In fact, you can still get hardware to read any of the old media that you stated.

Not true, of course. The Macintosh floppies of 1984 were recorded in zoned fashion (required a variable speed disk drive), not compatible with 1.44M modern 3.5" drives, and the early file formats aren't intelligible to modern computers. There were so many 5.25" floppy formats that we had a special computer set up just to read 'em all (does anyone remember Discon?).

Thankfully, there's a good written standard for CD and DVD filesystems; those will be readable for a long time if the media survives.

Re:Text, but why?

[whoever57]

It seems that it might be better to have at least three backups, that way you can have one that is local to the data,

Actually, I do have a local backup in addition to the backups that are usually off-site. Nevertheless, the chance of losing my original data at the same time as my off-site backups is very, very low. I reduce the chance of losing my original data by monitoring the SMART data.

Re:Text, but why?

[bonehead]

Forget the hard copy.

Encrypt the text file, then upload it to Dropbox. Better yet, upload it to multiple free cloud storage providers as a hedge against one of them going out of business.

Trying to use printouts as a backup medium for digital data is the epitome of "doing it the hard way".

Re:Text, but why?

[booch]

While it's true that paper will ignite up at 424.4F (218C) it starts to yellow and char starting down at 302F (150C).

Wait, 424F? I thought it was 451F. I want my money back.

Re: Text, but why?

[dublin]

This is very dependent on the type of laser printer you have. All laser toners are not created equal!

A few years ago, I needed a good way to make my own outdoor labels gat would still be readable after 5-10 years outdoors, possibly in the sun. (The right way to do this is with professionally made polycarbonate enapsulated labels, but those are best for high volumes - we needed low volumes and the ability to do very small lot sizes.)

The answer was a quality "weatherproof laser label" (polyester, with a good outdoor adhesive) and the *RIGHT* kind of laser printer. After quite a bit of research, I found that the polymer toners used by Oki's LED page printers were the most durable I could find - they actually melt into the paper fibers, rather than just partially melting on top.

In my experience in the real world, Oki's toners are dramatically more durable than those from HP, Samsung, and Brother. In general, the "shinier" the toner, the more durable, but you also need to make sure the printer really bonds the toner strongly to the paper,name Oki's printers excel at that, too. (Yeah, I realize I sound like an Oki printer fanboy, but only because they've earned it...)

Although the colored toners will fade in 3-5 years of exposure to the Texas sun (but are legible for up to 5 years, blue goes first), the black used for the barcodes (code128) appears to be set to last as long as the label itself. I've got some with over a decade outdoors that still read just fine, although the edges of the label look kinda ratty.

If there is more durable print output from an "ordinary" printer, I don't know what it is. With black toner and a really good label, the Oki is at least as durable as a purpose-built Zebra label printer, and produces great results on regular paper, too.

Easy

[ericloewe]

Print a human-readable copy and add a computer-readable format, like barcodes or a pen drive, a hard drive, SD card... (CDs might not survive very long if you're unlucky)

Re:Easy

[jones_supa]

Print a human-readable copy and add a computer-readable format, like barcodes or a pen drive, a hard drive, SD card... (CDs might not survive very long if you're unlucky)

Actually a high-quality CDR can be much better than pen drive, hard drive or SD card. Laser-burnt track versus electronic charge.

Re:Easy

[AmiMoJo]

SD cards might not survive very long either. Some of the expensive ones claim 100 years data retention, but so do expensive CD-Rs/DVD-Rs. They key is that they assume ideal conditions, which a locked strong box probably isn't.

Same goes for USB drives and hard drives.

Re:Easy

[ericloewe]

Hard drives are definitely better than any of the other options. CD-R versus flash memory is open for debate, but I've had bad experiences with CD-R/DVD-R. As long as it isn't dropped, exposed to unusual magnetic fields or high temperatures, a hard drive won't randomly lose its stored data.

Re: Easy

[statusbar]

I have a 20 meg MFM hard drive that is not readable by any computer anymore... just because of the interface.

Re:Easy

[Osgeld]

most claim 10 years

Re:Easy

[PhrostyMcByte]

Modern barcodes like PDF417, QR, and Data Matrix have robust error correction built into their spec and can take a lot of damage. If you're really wanting to print stuff on paper as a backup, these are definitely your best bet.

Personally, I'd just encrypt and shove into a few different off-site backups.

Re:Easy

[Nutria]

With consumer-grade drives, at least, they'll have trouble spinning up properly after a few years. (I know this from personal experience.)

Re:Easy

[bmearns]

Hard disks are vulnerable to heat though, aren't they? In the event of a fire, the inside of a fire box can still get pretty hot, and I suspect a hard disk will take damage well below the burning point of paper.

Re:Easy

[bmearns]

I agree, the robustness of a modern barcode is highly desirable, but I haven't found any that have good solutions for arbitrarily large amounts of data. Even the programs that generate them don't seem to have any built-in functionality for splitting data across multiple barcodes.

Re:Easy

[hedwards]

That's a concern, I know that there are fireproof HDD enclosures out there, but they're max rated to usually 20 minutes or so, but yeah, you can't use a normal fireproof safe for an HDD because paper is less sensitive than HDDs are.

Re: Easy

[kwark]

If you really have important data on it (import enough to keep the drive), you should have saved the interface card from the dump, also you should have kept a machine that could take the interface card.

My guess is I still have such hardware, if you make it worth my while I can retrieve the data for you.

Re:Easy

[capedgirardeau]

If you go CDR media, you should use CD+R as the +R standard has better error correction during burning than the -R standard.

That is not a joke, there actually is a difference between the two.

Re:Easy

[gd2shoe]

They key is that they assume ideal conditions, which a locked strong box probably isn't.

That depends on where the box is kept. Is it in the garage, or a closet in the study? If it's kept in the house (at a constant comfortable temperature), then conditions aren't all that far from ideal.

(Also, I've heard that a firebox is more likely to survive a fire if it is kept near an outside wall. FYI)

Re: Easy

[hamster_nz]

He is making a valid point.

Soon IDE will be a thing of the past, and maybe SATA will be replaced with something better... maybe native USB3.0 to the disk?

When I cleaned out my garage I found some old floppies (5.25" and 3.5", including compilers and OSs that cost me quite a lot), some DAT tapes, some Jaz disks, some zip disks, some audio cassettes and some MFM disks too.

All of which are pretty much junk.

An interesting aside - when I looked up the specs for a 20Meg MFM disk I found I was surprised that a then current PC was able to read the entire contents in less than half a minute. If only we could do that with today's 3TB drives...

Re: Easy

[hamster_nz]

Spoken like somebody who was born in the plug and play PC age...

The MFM controller actually controlled the disk positioning, and so you need to know the physicals of the device to access it, hopefully avoiding trashing the disk.

Re:Easy

[EETech1]

http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/memory-vault/

Looks interesting.

Re: Easy

[phantomfive]

some Jaz disks, some zip disks,

Wow, I"m sure glad those went out.

Re:Easy

[ericloewe]

I have never heard of CD+R, and as far as I know, it does not officially exist. DVD-R vs. DVD+R is a whole different story, though.

Re:Easy

[tgd]

SD cards might not survive very long either. Some of the expensive ones claim 100 years data retention, but so do expensive CD-Rs/DVD-Rs. They key is that they assume ideal conditions, which a locked strong box probably isn't.

Same goes for USB drives and hard drives.

And they're estimated by broad sampling MTBF, and calculating how long data "should" last.

I.e., the estimates mean absolutely nothing.

QR codes?

[jehan60188]

there must be some way to do QR codes
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ can do it 160 characters at a time, but that seems really inconvenient

Re:QR codes?

[mlts]

I've used Paperbak to an extent, and it is a very good tool. The only problem is that it isn't widespread, so if one loses access to the download site, it might be hard to find a copy for decoding. QR codes are useful, but compared to the ability to print out data with variable compression and error correction like Paperbak, they are not that useful.

Re:QR codes?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Here's a link for Paperbak: http://ollydbg.de/Paperbak/

PaperBack is a free application that allows you to back up your precious files on the ordinary paper in the form of the oversized bitmaps. If you have a good laser printer with the 600 dpi resolution, you can save up to 500,000 bytes of uncompressed data on the single A4/Letter sheet. Integrated packer allows for much better data density - up to 3,000,000+ (three megabytes) of C code per page. ....

Actual version is for Windows only, but it's free and open source, and there is nothing that prevents you from porting PaperBack to Linux or Mac, and the chances are good that it still will work under Windows XXXP or Trillenium Edition. And, of course, you can mail your printouts to the recipients anywhere in the world, even if they have no Internet access or live in the countries where such access is restricted by the regiment.

Whatever you do.... Use papyrus

[pollarda]

The Egyptians used hand written papyrus and we still have copies to look at. The laser printed paper copies of the Book of the Dead simply didn't survive.

Re:Whatever you do.... Use papyrus

[Anonymous Coward]

This old myth again? OP, use paper or papyrus. It won't make much of a difference as long as you learn the real lesson from the Egyptians: Live in the desert and bury yourself and your belongings in large stone vaults.

Re:Whatever you do.... Use papyrus

[phantomfive]

In the case of the Egyptians, it helps to store the documents in a low-humidity desert.

Re:Whatever you do.... Use papyrus

[tgd]

This old myth again? OP, use paper or papyrus. It won't make much of a difference as long as you learn the real lesson from the Egyptians: Live in the desert and bury yourself and your belongings in large stone vaults.

Worse yet, unless you know how much material was printed on papyrus by the Egyptians, you have literally no data to base the claim on, anyway. You don't know if 99%, 1%, or .000001% of things printed on it survived.

QR code

[carlhaagen]

Just to cover more alternatives. But, really, why make things unnecessarily complicated for yourself? If the papers are in your firebox anyway, why encrypt? If you insist, try encrypted RAR with parity, converted to base64 and printed as the resulting plaintext in a decently large print to make sure no smudging will cause trouble during OCR.

Re:QR code

[jones_supa]

I dunno. I would keep it simple. It might be slightly dangerous to depend on technologies like base64 and RAR which might not be around 20-30 years from now.

Re:QR code

[bmearns]

I agree in general and for RAR in particular, but just to nitpick, base64 format is trivial and can realistically be encoded/decoded by hand.

Re:QR code

[carlhaagen]

I wouldn't consider base64 or RAR "technologies" as such (really, what is it with Americans and considering -everything- a "technology"?). QR coding, data reformatting and data compression, however, are technologies, and I am willing to bet that at least the latter two as well as their histories will be present 30 years from today. These were just suggestions, though. My personal choice would be to keep the documents in their original plaintext format and simply store them somewhere SAFE, rather than trying to compress and/or obfuscate them.

QR Codes

[Zarhan]

They contain error correction, they are scalable, and have quite a nice information density. And you can generate them with tons of free tools and several APIs are available as well.

Personally, I just keep backups and don't bother with hard copies.

Re:QR Codes

[maz2331]

I'd rather use the Datamatrix format instead. The density is much higher - up to 1556 bytes per barcode, and it can be encoded in either ASCII or binary forms.

Use the correct font for OCR

[chill]

Google for OCR-A and OCR-B as TTF. There are freely available versions. I use them for mailing labels, along with PostNet bar codes to make it as easy as possible for the Post Office.

Re:Use the correct font for OCR

[twistedcubic]

i totally agree about the font. I used to store ascii encryption keys on plain paper. The one time I needed to recover the key, I realized I was too lazy to train the OCR to distinguish O's from 0's and 1's from l's. Months later I found a USB thumb drive with the key in a pile of my junk at home.

Re:Use the correct font for OCR

[Zocalo]

Seconded on the OCR-A and OCR-B fonts; use of these on quality paper pretty much guarantees no OCR errors on scan back. Regarding the crypto aspect that kind of depends on your needs. You can get zippable envelopes with tags that cannot be removed without breaking the tag such as these designed for internal email. Put your hardcopy in one of these and add a visual inspection of it to detect tampering to your daily backup routine, and that maybe enough. If you really do need the encryption, then you can apply any crypto you like to the plain text file, then take the resultant binary output and run it though something like UUEncode to render it into regular ASCII printable characters than can then be printed and stored in your firebox. To recover, scan it in, OCR, run it through UUDecode to recover the binary then decrypt as usual.

Re:Use the correct font for OCR

[kriston]

Forget OCR-A, just use OCR-B because, unlike all of the fancy digitally efficient compressed hardcopy versions, you can actually read OCR-B without going blind.

One word

[vikingpower]

QR codes. You can encrypt these. If you print them e.g. on plastic foil, they'll last close to forever. Of course, you will need to keep a piece of hardware that can read QR codes.

I would, however, take another route, although outside of the scope of your question. It is something I already do for files that are very valuable to me: I put them on magneto-optical disks. The things last forever and withstand the roughest of treatments. Writing and reading are slow, but that is a downside I just accept. I still have a database ( invaluable to me ) I acquired in the middle '90s on magneto-optical disk. It survived: a fire; spilling of liquids, including dog pee; some mild X-ray radiation; an inadvertent stay in our home's trash can; being jumped upon by a kid; and a 20-foot fall.

Re:One word

[bmearns]

Interesting, I've never seen these. However, the issue then becomes finding a device that can access these in ten or twenty years.

Re: One word

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, this happens to stuff that is very valuable to you? You either have an awesomely interesting life or are a weird mix of paranoid and careless.

Re:One word

[vlueboy]

QR codes. You can encrypt these. If you print them e.g. on plastic foil, they'll last close to forever. Of course, you will need to keep a piece of hardware that can read QR codes.

Has anyone open sourced a SOFTWARE reader yet?
I tried to find a reader months ago and was disappointed that they were all app store links. To many of us this requires
* supporting app stores instead of just downloading an easy desktop binary
* upgrading phone hardware to include autofocus lens, potentially locked into new 2 year contract; my $200 phone didn't cut it
* data plan usage and middlemen tracking. Apps demand web access before forking over the decoded QR info
* the weirdness of seeing software that outputs QR codes but cannot read any

We should be able to use our existing point and shoot cams to scan from JPEG, like we do with OCR. Instead, it feels like a market that strong-arms us into mobile.

Re:One word

[vlueboy]

>> Has anyone open sourced a SOFTWARE reader yet?

Yep :)
sudo apt-get install zbar-tools.
And, use zbarimg.

mint@mint ~/Desktop $ zbarimg code.jpg
QR-Code:http://m.http://gizmodo.com/5969312/how-qr-codes-work-and-why-they-suck-so-hard
scanned 1 barcode symbols from 1 images in 0.07 seconds

From http://gizmodo.com/5969312/how-qr-codes-work-and-why-they-suck-so-hard. The url glitch is probably courtesy of the gizmodo reporter ; )

Now that you gave me a name, just found that it reads normal barcodes and a Win32 release and other notes for later:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zbar/
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/zbar/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Compile_with_MinGW_in_Windows

Thanks!

Re:One word

[gl4ss]

Interesting, I've never seen these. However, the issue then becomes finding a device that can access these in ten or twenty years.

50% of smartphones come with a qrcode reader nowadays and the spec is widely documented..

there's other such 2d barcodes too. however, with the amount of data it might be better to just go the ocr route. qrcode doesn't scale up that well with amount of data iirc.

there's couple of formats to just encode data to paper too, meant to be read with a scanner.

Re: One word

[tgd]

or are a weird mix of paranoid and careless.

Welcome to Slashdot.

Paperback

[Anonymous Coward]

Created compressed password protected files and then use Paperback http://www.ollydbg.de/ to print the results. Downsides are PC based program to encode/decode but upside is you get the source code.

Print and flash

[morcego]

Get one of those thin flash cards, save the data on it, and tape it to the printed paper.

I mean, c'mon. What's the point of having it ONLY on paper? Yes, this is the backup of the backup. So what? Add another layer and save you the trouble later. Or two layers. It is obviously not too much data, since you are considering backup it up on paper. So just for a few 5ers and get some low capacity flash cards, make lots of copies.

Re:Print and flash

[bmearns]

When I said "backup of a backup" I meant I've already got it backed up digitally. The paper backup is for the (admittedly unlikely) event that the digital backup becomes damaged, corrupted, obsolete, or otherwise inaccessible. For instance, a flash device will likely start loosing data after about a decade, according to most mfr specs. Hard disks can be easily damaged when left unused for a while, especially when subjected to excessive heat.

Re: Print and flash

[chill]

Have you looked at M-disc? They're supposedly nigh indestructible and claim to last 1,000+ years w/o errors.

Re:Print and flash

[morcego]

One option would be tape drivers (LTO etc), but considering the amount of data we are talking about, it would probably be prohibitively expensive.

The problem with any kind of encoding, for long time storage, is having a reading decide. Even barcode scanners might not be available 10 years from now.

Re: Print and flash

[bmearns]

I haven't, though several others have recommended it. They're very interesting, but the issue is finding a device that will read them in 1000 years.

Re:Print and flash

[bmearns]

Yes, tape drives are too expensive for my purposes, and there's still the issue of obsolescence. Anything that can be implemented in software (like a barcode scanner, I feel safe in assuming digital imaging equipment won't go away in the next century) is at least a safer bet than hardware. The issue then becomes resurrecting the knowledge to decode it, but not building or finding the hardware to do so.

Re:Print and flash

[morcego]

Remember to print in big, block letter. Standard fonts, nothing fancy. The bigger they are, the easier they will be for OCR to recognize. Use double spacing also. Use standard 7bit characters if you can, to avoid codepage problems in the future.

Forget printed encoding. They are not efficient.

Re: Print and flash

[OrangeTide]

In 1000 years, not your problem. You could probably build a device to read DVDs with nanomachines and lasers from a children's toy a few hundred years from now.
A holographic copying machine would probably also have the resolution to extract the track data from a DVD.

This.

[sideslash]

In terms of their ubiquity in modern marketing, QR Codes are a slightly annoying solution in search of a problem; but as an engineering approach to the sort of problem the OP described, they're fantastic. There are many free and open source QR Code generation utilities and libraries, and the QR Code spec itself was patented, but freely licensed for public use by the Toyota subsidiary that invented it.

QR codes include error correction, and can encode binary data on the order of a hundred times the density of a regular bar code.

Re:This.

[hedwards]

That's stating it strongly, they're awesome for business cards where you can scan the info from the card quickly, and hand the card back, or take the card and quickly scan it back at the office.

They're also awesome for delivering links very quickly.

In other words, they solve quite a few real world problems already, and because there are many free utilities, you can generate and use them yourself, without having to buy a special device.

Re:This.

[adolf]

If I am handing out a business card, then I am handing it out to someone for their address book. I am not giving a business card, then saying "Oh, now could I have that back, because it is the only one I have with me."

I think you somehow managed to miss the entire fucking point, AC.

A QR code on personalized business card, wherein that QR code contains contact information for the person handing it to you (not a link to that information, but the information itself), is fantastic.

In my own use-case, I can snap the QR code and quickly and effortlessly add the information address book on my phone, which updates all of the other stuff I have which has an address book.

At that point, the card is totally useless to me. I might as well hand it back, where it can be directly reused, because otherwise I'm just going to toss it into the nearest waste bin.

Of course the person handing it to me isn't going to ask for it back -- they gave it to me, and I can do what I want with it -- I can keep it, stomp on it, turn it into a little airplane, wad it up and throw it, file it in my wallet, or, you know, just give it back when I'm done.

Re:This.

[hedwards]

You're missing the point, the point of that isn't necessarily to get the card back, the point of it is that they don't have to waste time entering the information as the code does that for them.

If I give somebody my contact information, I'm not doing it as a bit of evil scheming to drown them in clutter, I'm doing it so that they can have my contact information where they'll use it.

Additionally, in which part of my post did I say that the QR code would replace the human readable stuff?

Re:This.

[adolf]

I would insert it in my anus

I might, as well. But first, I'm going to read the QR code, unless I'm trying to prove a point about just how lousy the vendor must be.

More information!

[onyxruby]

We need more information to be able to answer your question! What kind of barcode scanner? How much information? Are you talking a few pages of account numbers or are you talking reams of source code? How do you plan to get the data once you need it? More than once data recovery project has failed over the years when the data was available but there was no means to recover the data from the media!!

Are you going to keep at least two barcode scanners in your lockbox (a decent one is about $6-$800), what about a license for a product to read the data and it's media? Do you have a preferred operating that you have to use? Is this for legal purposes where you have to maintain the chain of custody?

Do you need the ability to recover data in a hurry, or can you take a couple days to recover data for account numbers for another country, or is this a legal recovery so that you can prove that /you/ wrote the source code to something? Why not use tried and true methods of data archival like tape backup, hard disk, or archival qualities of optical media? It almost seems like your deliberately trying to be obtuse for the sake of being obtuse.

If you simply want privacy go with your pick of an open source crypto program and store with an 2048 bit key or some such thing. For lack of a better way to put it you sound like your asking for the best wrench to hammer a nail into a board with - just get a hammer.

Re:More information!

[bmearns]

Well, the questions about barcode scanners are kind of outdated. Any android device can scan and decode barcodes with a multitude of free apps. Or a PC with a scanner or a digital camera.

I would argue that the most conventional "tried and true" method of archiving is ink on paper (or similar media). But there are a number of reasons I don't want to rely on digital backups. I have them, as a primary backup, but for my most important data, I want something that: a) is not subject to obsolescence; b) has a longer natural life expectancy (flash storage, for instance, usually has a data retention of only 10 years per spec); and c) is more robust against humidity, heat, and electrical extremes.

The amount of data is on the order of a few dozen kB. There are no legal requirements, this is only personal data I don't want to loose. Privacy is not a big concern (certainly not the main one), but it is a plus. The question of encryption is really just a matter of whether or not the encoding supports it (i.e., binary data). For instance, if I'm printing in plain text, I wouldn't encrypt it. If I'm printing barcodes, or encoded text, I probably would.

Re:More information!

[onyxruby]

Interesting case then, sounds like a few account number or the like. At any rate what I would suggest is that you buy asset tags for securing assets as they made for storing a small amount of data, are difficult to remove and are already made to highly resistant to heat and humidity.

Your other option is to get heavy duty paper that is 'acid-free' from a trusted manufacturer. This is actually more difficult than it sounds as modern paper is pretty much all made with acid based methods. It's why a 1960's version of a book in a book store is often in worse shape than the same book from the late 1800's.

The tricky part is finding acid free paper that you can print on as it's pretty much a novelty item any more for book snobs and archivists. If you can find in your local standard size format you than need to print on it in an ink that is also acid free. I would suggest you head over to an archivist forum for advice on ink's that won't degrade your paper. I once lost a bet with a friend a number of years back as I didn't think bit rot was a real thing, turns out it affects pretty much every single form of media we have.

Since you have such a small amount of data the fairly high cost of supplies for proper acid free materials should be trivial. Once you have them you can simply print redundant copies and read them with a small hand held scanner. I'm used to setting up enterprise asset management systems that included barcode scanners so my suggestion was probably overkill for you ;-)

Hard Copy Okay

[DERoss]

For printing, pick a font that has no ambiguous characters. This makes OCR easier if you have to retrieve the data back into a computer. I suggest Trebuchet, in which I (upper-case eye), l (lower-case ell), and 1 (one) are distinct. Alternatively, use either the OCR-A or OCR-B font, which are not easily read by humans. Place the hard copy in a sealed envelope and store it in a bank safe-deposit box.

Also in the same safe-deposit box, store electronic copies using at least two different media (two so that, if one becomes obsolete and unreadable, the other might still be used). You might want to change the media -- or at least review them -- annually to ensure they are still useable.

Re:Hard Copy Okay

[jones_supa]

You might want to change the media -- or at least review them -- annually to ensure they are still useable.

That and, always mount them read-only so that no software gets to tamper them. Preferably even use a dedicated computer for the verification if we are talking about extremely important data.

Re:Hard Copy Okay

[JDevers]

Alternatively, use either the OCR-A or OCR-B font, which are not easily read by humans.

Huh? Pretty, well no...but VERY readable. Simple monospaced block type. Not sure why it wouldn't be readable, especially since that was the original mission statement for OCR A and B, to be easily machine and human readable.

Re:Hard Copy Okay

[DERoss]

I feel that OCR-A and OCR-B are so stylized that they are somewhat distracting. Thus, it takes more effort to read text in such fonts than reading text in (for example) Georgia or Verdana. Even my recommended Trebuchet is somewhat stylized, but I find it easier to read than either of the OCR fonts.

One way to look at this issue is whether an individual is aware that a font is "different". If so, then more concentration is required to grasp the meaning of the text, concentration to avoid distraction.

Twibright Optar

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look at Twibright Optar (http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/)

(A review is at: http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/)

Re:Twibright Optar

[bmearns]

Interesting, thanks. I'll take a look. I'm a little hesitant about using an "outsider" format, meaning something that isn't widely used or known and has a high risk of going away when I need it in 20 years. The upside is that it's open source. The downside is that I would need to store either the source code or a good description of the format along with the data, and then I get into a chicken and egg problem.

Re:Twibright Optar

[efscher]

Well, the source code size is ~180K. You can print that too, I suppose...

Punch tape

[erroneus]

Might be hard to find, but a nice plastic form of punch tape might do the job of both having a hard copy (technically human readable) and being machine-readable. You'd have the added advantage of being able to encorporate encryption if you so desired.

Re:Punch tape

[Anne Thwacks]

Anyone who deserves a geek card could make a punched tape reader in half a day with one hand tied behind is hback, and probably read it by running his fingers over it witha few days practice. However, a few megabytes takes quite a lot of space. 10 chars per inch, tape is 1 inch wide and 1/100 inch thick. You do the math (I am too busy drinking whiskey)

Re:Punch tape

[confused one]

Don't use plastic tape, use stainless steel. laser cut the pattern into it and it should last a long time, through floods and fire, hot and cold. Store it with a primer, in case you die and a future geek needs to decrypt the encoding. Avoid storing around people who like to play with thermite or explosives. Also avoid storing next to large vats of acid, unless treated with an acid resistant coating. I would recommend not living near a lava spewing volcano. Might want to avoid nuclear weapons detonation sites as well -- the steel might not survive that. Otherwise, I think it should be ok.

Fixed-width Base64

[shadowknot]

If you're really serious about having hard printouts that you want to later get back in should a disaster occur, an idea I would have would be to base64 encode the text and then print it using a fixed width font in order to make OCR easier down the line. The downside of this is that should the scan not be great or the paper become degraded then you may find you'd get weird encoding issues if, say, a lowercase "l" is read as an uppercase "I" I'd also take hashes of the text files and print them in the header/footer as a rudimentary way of verifying the files are the same after scanning them back. Maybe do a few tests before committing to such a method, this is totally off the top of my head BTW!

SD Cards

[Paperweight]

SD cards are surprisingly durable. While diving, I've recovered cameras that have been lost underwater for years and the flash cards work fine. I don't know about heat resistance, though, or how hot it might get in that firebox.

Re:SD Cards

[bmearns]

Durable, perhaps, but their data retention is pretty lousy. Most mfrs spec it at about 10 years under ideal conditions. There's also the issue of format and interface obsolescence.

Re:SD Cards

[OrangeTide]

I have more dead SD cards than CD-Rs. And I have a lot of old CD-Rs. The firmware that drives an SD card's FTL plus the inheriently unreliable MLC flash makes it a pretty useless long term medium.

Twibright Optar

[efscher]

Take a look at Twibright Optar: http://ronja.twibright.com/optar/ (A review is at: http://lwn.net/Articles/242735/)

braille digitial reader?

[RedHackTea]

There used to be one called Bridge, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, it's popular enough so that you can learn braille if you ever lose the digital reader. Also, if you can code at all, it'd be easier to parse the count of dots than the thickness of lines from scanned-in images; perhaps make up your own "braille" system and store the algorithm in plain text along with a bunch of other algorithms. I think you'll be safe enough from most thieves, just not the government (but they can already get your account information). Really, instead I'd rather recommend a remote server (or cloud) and just use Duplicity (rsync+gpg software).

Flash memory is not archival storage

[Anonymous Coward]

> pen drive ... SD card
No, absolutely not. Flash memory is not archival storage. Flash memory is subject to charge leakage over time and current MLC / TLC flash is even more vulnerable because 2 or 3 bits are stored per cell at the cost of reduced resolution margins.

Re:Flash memory is not archival storage

[whit3]

Not the issue; this is about keeping a backup of some
currently-in-use data, it'll get REWRITTEN onto those
flash drives every year or so.

So, a ten year data retention is more than adequate.

It'd be really easy to come up with a suitable fire-safe
place for a dozen microSD cards; that's only five
cubic centimeters...

Re:Flash memory is not archival storage

[mirix]

You could use standard SPI interfaced EEPROMs, they're generally rated >100 years longevity, 100k or more write/erase cycles.

Mind you they are fairly small, but certainly big enough to store account info, or keys, things like this. in DIP they only seem to come up to 1Mb (128kB), but SMT ones come in 64mbit (8MB).

Definitely an option for storing something like keys, etc, for long term, if you're a little handy with hardware (or if someone has made a handy EEPROM + USB-SPI adaptor on a stick).

There's a gazillion USB/SPI interfaces out there, the chips should work with any of them, pretty much... or you could use some computer with it in hardware - raspberry pi, beagle bone, etc.

Engraved to stone

[vasster]

Engraved to stone. Guaranteed for centuries.

Re:Engraved to stone

[bill_mcgonigle]

Engraved to stone. Guaranteed for centuries.

Stone might not have very good resolution, but laser-engraving a Paperbak pattern onto a slab of aluminium might be an interesting strategy.

Re:Engraved to stone

[confused one]

Until someone needs stone to build something. Old monuments were regularly torn down and the cut stone re-used. Inscribed tablets probably suffered similar fates. The Rosetta Stone was found in a wall.

Re:Engraved to stone

[AbRASiON]

or your money back!

Re:Engraved to stone

[harr2969]

Lasts for centuries - Unless he is very angry. http://biblehub.com/exodus/32-19.htm

PGPi OCR project

[jaak]

Back in the late 90s when it was difficult to export strong crypto out of the USA, the PGP project came up with a program to get around this by using some loopholes in the law that allowed the source code to be exported if it was printed in book form.

So the PGP source code was printed out, made into books, shipped overseas, and scanned and OCR'd. My memory is somewhat fuzzy, but they had a suite of utilities to do this reliably. See http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning for a description and links to the tools.

Re:PGPi OCR project

[karlnyberg]

Yes - highly recommend this. I found that with the CRC16 and CRC32 checksums, it became almost trivial to reconstruct electronic copies of the printed material.

Of course, this assumes that there's a scanner, etc. when you want to get stuff back.

http://karl.nyberg.net/publications/OCR.Cryptography.pdf

Online backup

[mc_botha]

I would compress it with a password (7-zip, RAR etc.) and then use Google Drive, Dropbox etc. to store it.
Thus it will be future proof for many years and accessible on any computer.

Re:Online backup

[bmearns]

In what way is it future proof? It uses special purpose formats and relies on third party cloud services.

Re:Online backup

[jd142]

It's future proof for several reasons:
--A cloud service(I'll use Google Drive as an example, but there are many) is distributed, with backups, and will shift data over to new technology as needed. Pretend Google Drive started off 30 years ago. At the time, they'd probably store your data on tape(yeah, yeah, slow access times, but that's not the point of this example). Then they switch over to ide hard drives. Then they make the switch to scsi, then sata. 5 years from now they switch to SuperDuperSSD. From your perspective, none of that matters. From your perspective, you put data on Google Drive, you take data off Google Drive. The technology they store it on doesn't matter and is going to change and adapt as new tech comes on line. I put my money in the bank, I take my money out of the bank. I don't care what the bank does or how they store it, I just want my money.

--A cloud service is redundant. When Lex Luthor finally causes that earthquake and makes California slide into the Pacific, your data is still safe on one of the other server centers that Google has, just for that emergency.

--A cloud service is stable. A major cloud service like Google Drive is not going to disappear overnight. Unless something causes the government to seize all of their servers at once, with no warning, and in a way that would never let you get your data back. That is highly unlikely as of today. So even if Google goes bankrupt, you will be able to see it coming and get your data back from them before the cut off date. Besides, you said this is a backup of a backup. So your original storage place is destroyed, your off-site backup is destroyed, and Google is destroyed utterly with no backups and no way to access that data. All three of those things have to happen at the same time. If all three of those happen on the same day, you will have more to worry about because someone probably dropped the big bombs.

--Someone else takes care of operating the server room. In another response, you wrote: "if I put it on a server now, I have to keep that server going for the next 10 or 20 years." With a cloud based service, that isn't an issue. I don't know why any person(not company) today would bother putting up their own server, except as a hobbyist's exercise. Or unless you are insanely paranoid.

--Access from anywhere. Seriously, if your first two backups are gone and the entire internet is down for more than a day and you need the data immediately, either one or two things will happen. Either people will understand that something very bad happened and they will make allowances for that knowing that you can get the data when the internet is backup. Or they've dropped the bombs and your main concern is radiation poisoning and the hordes of mutant zombies.

--A cloud service has zero to no cost. You get gigabytes of data for free and you said this is under a meg.

Seriously, as a backup to a backup, you have really over thought this. Now if you want to do something as a cool thing to do, that's fine and good and proper. Pick the QR codes or whatever strikes your fancy. But if your concern is availability and future proofing, just stick it on a backup service. Doesn't have to be google. There are four or five top tier online storage companies that aren't going anywhere in the immediate future. And if you happen to pick the wrong horse, just download the file before they go under and pick a different one. Microsoft's live drive actually meets the FERPA standard for data security if that's a concern, but you said it wasn't.

Re:Online backup

[Anonymous Coward]

It's future proof for several reasons:
--A cloud service(I'll use Google Drive as an example, but there are many) is distributed, with backups, and will shift data over to new technology as needed.

I'll use MegaUpload as another example...

Re:Google

[sideslash]

I think using a proprietary standard for this has potential for disaster in the long term. QR codes would be much better. Scenario: the author of "Paperbak" discovers a huge improvement in his algorithm and deprecates the old version. 20 years into the future somebody needs to decode their stuff, and they search for the source code to "Paperbak" and realize that the only version they can find on the future internet is the "new/improved" version that can't read their stuff. So they are just the lucky owners of some paper decorated with a very specific arrangement of dots.

With QR Codes, on the other hand, it is difficult to believe that the knowledge of their format will be lost in our lifetimes. They have their own Wikipedia entry describing their structure, for example.

Use print AND electronic backup

[linebackn]

If you are going to encode it in a non human readable format, there is little point to storing it on hardcopy over electronic storage medium (hard disk, USB flash, floppy, etc). You will still need a computer to access it.

There are some fonts out there specifically designed for OCR, but in practice any little spec of dust or dirt can change how the computer reads it (an "O" can become a "Q" for example. And "1" is easily misread as "i" - in some fonts they are even 100% identical). So OCR is OK for text that you can spellcheck, but not for other kinds of data.

Depending on the kind of data, you could include something like a printed checksum to verify you read it write.

To conserve space, just make the fonts as small as you feel comfortable reading, use both sides of the paper, possibly reformat the data to utilize more space on the page, and use thin lightweight paper. And include an additional electronic backup so you don't have to bother OCRing until the world ends next Thursday.

Re:Use print AND electronic backup

[paxprobellum]

Came here to say this. Just print it out and also put a flash drive in there.

Re:Use print AND electronic backup

[bmearns]

The reason for not relying on digital backups in unrelated to being human readable. The issue with digital backups is general data retention, susceptibility to heat and moisture, and technological obsolescence. I already use digital backups but I want a paper back up on top of that for my most important data (hence "backup of a backup").

I would never have thought of this.

[ls671]

I would never have thought of putting my backups on paper. I instead multiply the backup locations to insure the redundancy I am comfortable with.

Encrypted Text on Punch Cards

[flyingfsck]

There is no reason why you cannot print encrypted text, but OCR of fonts is more difficult and error prone than bar codes. How about totally geeking out with paper tape or punch cards?

Re:Encrypted Text on Punch Cards

[RockDoctor]

How about totally geeking out with paper tape or punch cards?

That would have been my preference too. If the data is un-encrypted, then you can read them with the Mk-1 human eyeball (takes a couple of hours practice, every day for a couple of weeks ; nothing drastic. Russian is harder to learn.) ; even if it's encrypted, you can transliterate from the paper tape to files on your new computer with the Mk-1 eyeball.

A tape reader is "nice to have", but not vital.

Tape has an advantage over punched cards that you only have one way to read it wrongly. But you can manage that risk perfectly adequately with punched card too, so that's not a deal-breaker. (I suspect that card readers have more moving parts than tape readers - all that card unstacking, moving and re-stacking - which would translate to a shorter lifetime.)

Someone suggested using plastic cards or tape ; I'd avoid those options. If your "fire safe" really is a fire safe, then paper should survive just fine while plastic may melt.

But again, the whole idea is fundamentally silly. If you really want the data to be secure, "disaster-recovery grade" backup is not exactly rocket science. Encrypt as desired. If you only want to do it with small amounts of data ("account information," whatever that means) then substitute SD cards, memory sticks or whatever floats your boats, but keep the data regularly refreshed. If you've really got to keep the data secure and usable for decades, then you need to go to "disaster-recovery grade" backup anyway, so just bite the bullet and pay for it. Then pass the cost to your customers. If they don't want to pay, then you probably don't want them as customers. This also applies if they're family.

I suppose it could be someone looking for a plot element in a "steam-punk" genre. That could be quite amusing. There may even be an RFC for that, similar to RFC 1149.

Why so concerned about it being 'secure'?

[Greg01851]

What information is so important that you have to deal with it in this fashion? Just curious...

Re:Why so concerned about it being 'secure'?

[bmearns]

I'm really not too concerned about it being secure. I mentioned encryption as an upside/downside, but not a deal breaker. The main concern is that the data will be accessible for several decades, and in the event of a catastrophe.

Microfilm is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Microfilm is still the best way to store large quantities of data in hard copies. Easy to store on film, easy to copy, easy to convert to digital files again if needed. Cheap. It doesn't require complicated machinery or defunct software to access

Stone

[flyingfsck]

Chisel the data in stone. Then use the stone to build your house. It is known to last for thousands of years.

Re:Stone

[flyingfsck]

Never been to Egypt have you?

Punched cards or punched paper tape

[Sesostris III]

It's how we used to get data into the system, or store data from the system, many (ahem) decades ago!

Seriously, it's a shame these technologies are no longer used, as they would be ideal for this purpose.

Re:Punched cards or punched paper tape

[egcagrac0]

A punch card is good for what, 80 10 bit characters, plus a little out-of-band signal?

Using the same 7x3" (and change...) area to hold 14 200dpi QR codes can store about 25k 8 bit characters of data, with error correction.

It can also use a now-ubiquitous digital camera or many office copiers as an input device.

QR Codes

[Alsee]

QR Codes are 2-D barcodes. Each QR square can support 4k of (capitals-only) alphanumeric text, or nearly 3k of binary data. It has built-in support for error correction and spanning data across multiple QR Code blocks. And of course binary data can be encrypted.

-

Print it out with check digits

[SSpade]

http://www.pgpi.org/pgpi/project/scanning/

As title cards on B and W film

[istartedi]

Shoot title cards of the text onto BW film which is flammable nitrate stock. Mix in with scenes of people acting in early 20th century costume. The actual film may not last, and might burn your house down; but if anybody ever finds it they'll do their best to transfer it to something else.

Re:As title cards on B and W film

[Jiro]

There isn't a very good recortd for those surviving when they are actual B&W early twentieth century films.

Re:print the GPG of the text file.

[MachDelta]

You just reminded me of a song

Sadly, Frontalot is probably right... today's secure crypto tends to be tomorrows old and busted.

Font

[wbane]

This might be a bit of a stretch.. but if you want some "encryption" on your printed copies.. have you considered using a font like wingdings or webdings to use as the print font? I was thinking about some of the previous posts regarding Egyptian glyphs and tho it's not a solid "encryption" (more obfuscation).. It would be a security deterrance, if anything. And if you need to "decrypt" your text you could utilize an in-hand charmap to decode it and OCR should allow you to scan it in with "read as font". Just an idea.

OCR is fine

[phantomfive]

If your text is entirely in a single, simple font, OCR can work really well on that. You shouldn't have any trouble. QR codes might have been forgotten in 20 years, and are hard for humans to read.

Personally I'd just stick a USB stick in the safe, printing it out is too much work.

How about multiple formats

[the eric conspiracy]

If I was doing it I'd use a combination of 3 techniques:

1 Plain text for human readability
2 QR codes for scanning and error correction
3 Redundant Gold stabilized Azo dye CDRs with ECC codes for fast machine readability

Does it degrade gracefully?

[wisnoskij]

DVD videos, for example, have error correction, yada yada yada.
But, at the same time you can put a tiny tiny nick in one and the entire thing can become unreadable.
VHSes mean-while will degrade gracefully.
I do not know anything about barcode encoding, but you should always consider how damaging a small amount of damage/warping is and how the data degrades when damaged.

Text degrades very gracefully, the entire page needs to be completely destroyed to lose the entire data set.
No idea about barcodes.

Archival quality CD/DVD blanks

[david.emery]

Are available at camera stores. I suspect we'll be able to read CD formats for quite a while longer.

Text. It's the only way.

[roc97007]

This is a backup to your backup, so digital means must have failed before you'd consider using it. Text is low density, but it has an advantage that any encrypted barcode or other high tech means do not have -- it can be read by human eyes. When you're huddled in a rough lean-to roasting a feral cat over the campfire amid the wreckage of civilization, you will still be able to read your backup. That might come in handy.

tatoos?

[methano]

I'm thinking tatoo might be a good medium. Depends on your storage needs and the size of your back.

Re:Text. It's the only way.

[roc97007]

Sorry, I omitted: Over a campfire of old burning tires. It gives the cat a nice smoky isoprene taste. Try it, you'll.... well, it'll keep you alive.

Then what will you do?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

You should print it on acid-free paper if you plan on scanning it back in because regular paper will be useless to you in about 150-200 years.

An exercise in data reduction

[petes_PoV]

First: get rid of 90% of the stuff. If you truly have that many accounts, how many have you used in the past year? Just close all the rest. For all the other stuff, just keep your DoB, driving licence, passport, social security, address (in case you forget - but then you wouldn't know where your safe was located), bank accounts numbers and maybe a few utility accounts.

After you've done that the problem will have resolved itself to the point where most people just have a folder of "stuff".

If you still feel the urge to put printed copies in a fire-safe, take into account the type of ink you print your stuff with (you wouldn't want to come back in 5 years to discover all you have was faded sheets with no printing on them) and also just how long your safe remains fireproof for. It may not be as good as you'd hoped.

Re:I have a suggestion.

[bmearns]

Thanks for the idea, but there are a number of reasons I don't want to rely on digital storage. In fact, I do have a USB harddisk in the same fire box that I use for backups, but for my most important data, I want a second, more robust, backup. I only have data on the order of kilobytes, so cost is really not a concern. Digital storage of any practical variety is fairly susceptible to damage and just general data loss over time. There's also the very real possibility of obsolescence and an inability to access my data over the next few decades with a digital backup.

punch holes

[jjbarrows]

punch holes in cardboard.
here at hobarthackerspace we have a pdp8 a chap is restoring so soon we may be able to have reliable paper backups.

Re:Why paper?

[bmearns]

Most flash media is only specified for a data retention of about 10 years under ideal conditions. There's also the issue for trying to find a computer that can access a USB 2.0 flash drive in ten or twenty years.

The answer is in the past.

[kurt555gs]

High density Morse Code.

Re:Google

[hedwards]

I know you're joking, but if you're trying to archive things like this, it's a good idea to include the documentation for how to generate and read the codes your using.

Rethink what you're trying to accomplish here

[Rich0]

Why do you want to store bits on paper and not on some other medium? Chances are that paper is not the medium with the best data security.

Ultimately the only difference between storing a bit on a magnetic domain on some disk and in the color of some paper fibers is the far inferior data density of the paper, and the relative durability.

Unless you're just talking about a fairly small amount of information the economy of scale will almost always favor digital media. With barcodes you could probably store about 265k/page (with some of that taken up by ECC no doubt, and you'll probably have to roll your own software to manage it all). That is about 260MB per 20lb ream of paper if you double-side it. That is 80lbs/GB, at a cost of probably $12/GB if you get half-decent paper in bulk (what would be the point of using super-cheap paper?). Oh, and that isn't factoring in the costs to print it all, or later scan it all back. It would take hours to print 1GB of barcode and you'd spend probably $20 on toner doing it with an economical printer.

I'm sure you could buy the nicest archival DVDs for WAY less than that, and you can burn several GB in a few minutes and read it back in even less time, and the discs won't weigh 80lbs each.

Go ahead and add extra ECC, or use tape/whatever. I imagine that no matter how you slice it the paper will be the least effective storage solution against any failure mode.

Re:Good god.

[bmearns]

You missed the point. Privacy is a secondary concern. The primary concern is backup, i.e., data availability for the far future and in the event of some catastrophe. Any digital copies will be subject to a myriad of vulnerabilities that paper doesn't have (obsolescence, data retention, etc). And if I put it on a server now, I have to keep that server going for the next 10 or 20 years. It's like those companies who rely on software that only works with windows 95 so they have to have some clunky old cream-colored tower sitting around somewhere just to access old records. Plus, it would need to be a remote server in order to be useful as a backup, and that means I have to rely on that provider still being around when I need them. If I put it on paper in some useful way and stick in a secure location, I don't have to worry about it again until the day I need the data.

Re:I have a suggestion.

[nospam007]

" I only have data on the order of kilobytes, so cost is really not a concern."

Then have it laser etched into stainless steel sheets. Or platinum, if your last half sentence is really accurate. :-)

But Kilobytes? Is this the encryption key for your porn stash?

Re:Simple comparison

[bmearns]

Jesus, you people will over-engineer ANYTHING.

Well there's a reason this is "news for nerds", not "news for practical people".

Yes, it would be pretty easy to re-type the information, which is one of the reasons I'm considering printing in plain text. But if there's a better way to do it (easier, more reliable) why wouldn't I want that? The whole reason I asked was to get opinions on what makes the most sense. Now I've got your opinion.

Have you seen this...

[denzacar]

...post on Dan's Data already?
He covered most options available for what you want back in 2009, and apparently he did an update in 2011.

http://www.dansdata.com/gz094.htm

Bitcoin block chain?

[Time_Ngler]

Why not encrypt it and store it within the bitcoin block chain. As long as there is at least a few lonely souls still mining it your data is as safe as it could ever be.

QR codes anyone?

[William-Ely]

If I was tasked with printing out text that needed to be archived in a vault I think I would encode the text as a QR code with the error correction set to level H first.
I would also consider laminating the pages or doing something to protect them from moisture and dryness.

Personally I toss a USB drive in a safe deposit box every few months.

My way. aluminum foil laser etching

[LostMyBeaver]

I use laser etching for gigs of data into aluminum foil to store data content into the foil as binary data with ECC. Binary data is burned through. Clear text is then etched upon upon the surface as a microscopic print.

The end result is a printer media which should last several thousand years.

Hard Copy from the Digital Cinema Indutry

[Anonymous Coward]

LTO5 Tape in IBM LTFS format is the current Tape standard in the Banking industry we also use it in Digital Motion Picture Industry.

Unless he's planning for the Butlerian Jihad

[Nefarious Wheel]

Read Frank Herbert's "Dune" for the reference.

Re:Unless he's planning for the Butlerian Jihad

[c0lo]

Then, it wouldn't be paper, but shigawire.

Re:Simple comparison

[egcagrac0]

What seems to make the most sense to me is to split each page into two sections: the human readable, and a barcode (like QR). Both should carry the same data.

Use physical security, rather than encryption. Trying to decrypt it later may just piss you off a lot; storing it in a tamper-evident sealed envelope will give you almost the same peace of mind (possibly more).

I'm not doing either; I keep an encrypted copy in an online place.

If printing it out and scanning it back in was really a good idea, it would have caught on back in the '80s. (Sadly, I do not remember the name of the device... but some computer magazines offered their programs in a scannable format, encouraging you to buy the expensive device to read them in rather than type them in.)

Hollerith Cards

[jacobsm]

I have an entire box of unpunched punch cards that I'm willing to sell, for the right price.

Hex, OCR-A

[Lehk228]

print the Hexadecimal representation on good archival paper in OCR-A it will be practically bullet proof

if you must encrypt, encrypt each account separately that way if a portion of the page is lost / destroyed the rest is still useful.

Base64 encoding

[evilviper]

This was figured out (for e-mail) decades ago. A number of mail servers only supported 7-bit data (ie. ASCII text), so you couldn't just dump binary data in an e-mail and expect it to get through, uncorrupted. Not to mention DOS/Unix text conversion destroying binaries...

First it was UUEncode. But that was soon eclipsed by Base64 encoding. Any data you have can be run through the base64 command included with most Linux systems, and come out as plain text. The output can be run through the base64 -d command to be returned to the original.

This might not sound impressive when you're printing out plain text, but something like gzip can give you 90%+ compression on a plain text file, and base64 gives you that data in a format that can be printed out on paper, and read and typed back in.

Encryption can be in the loop as well... In fact PGP ALREADY DOES ALL OF THIS FOR YOU. You can tell it to compress the data with gzip or bzip2 before encrypting it with your key, and you can tell it to "ASCII armor" the output (typically for e-mail use).

As an added bonus, with PGP you can protect yourself against data loss by taking your password-protected public/private keypair, and output it with the password removed, and ASCII armored, so it can be printed out to paper, and stored (somewhere even safer than your safe) so you can always decrypt your critical data, by proving you have physical access to that key printout, even if you forgot the password you used to protect it, years later.

And if you want extra protection against physical damage of the paper copies in your safe, PAR2 will allows you to "RAID" your data, using parity and checksums to reconstruct the bits missing in your data. You can select the exact percentage of parity data you want... I find 34% a very good arrangement, so you have 3 pages (or CDs/DVDs) of data plus one of just parity, allowing you to recover any one entirely missing page in the set of four, OR if you don't lose a page, recover the data if up to 34% of the media is damaged, no matter what the distribution across the four.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Google

[SgtKeeling]

Actually, when it comes to Firefox, it's pretty easy to find 2.0, or even 0.8 if you really want. Mozilla has a page of every version of Firefox ever released: https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

Why make life so difficult?

[Guspaz]

How secure does this need to be? Burn a copy to m-discs (rated at 1000 years), put a copy on tape (rated a few decades), put a copy in the cloud (like BackBlaze). Printing this out on paper doesn't make any sense. If you do that, be sure to store it in an OCR-compatible format, and be sure to use something that has heavy amounts of error correction built in so that you can get a 100% data reproduction even with OCR errors.

Another option is to put several QR codes on a page. QR codes max out (by spec) at between 1,276 and 2,956 bytes at version 40 (the largest size) depending on how much error correction is involved. At max level, 1,276 bytes are stored and 30% of the QR code can be destroyed before data loss. At min level, 2,956 bytes can be stored and 7% can be lost. Not all apps can read such large barcodes, however.

Not Long Lasting

[detain]

DVD's do not have a very long shelf life, even if kept very well. Maybe they make longer lasting (more expensive?) DVDs with better dyes and materials.

Re:Not Long Lasting

[icebike]

The shelf life is FAR longer than Slashdot nerds would have you believe.
No one specified a time frame here, certainly not the original story.

As far as I'm concerned, 100 years is more than adequate. Beyond that its someone elses problem.

The technology will change and people will have to move the data to another media well before then.

Re:Not Long Lasting

[OrangeTide]

M-Disc claims closer to 1000 years. As it uses a mineral system instead of dyes.
In a fire, all DVDs use a polycarbonate material which wouldn't hold up as well as paper. For example it might become too fragile to spin in a drive after being exposed to heat for a prolong period. On the otherhand you could probably bury one in the ground and have it last closer to the 1000 years they claim, as polycarbonate isn't generally considered easily biodegrabable.

Re:Not Long Lasting

[Xest]

The problem is that such claims are rarely valid in practice, note the disclaimer:

"Stored properly, designed to last up to 100 years
Limited lifetime warranty"

Right, and what is properly? how do you prove they were stored properly if they contest the claim? If it's such a good trustworthy product then why is the warranty limited? what are the limits?

The fact is most manufacturers will make such claims even when they know they are not true because the chance of the staff behind said claims being around in as little as even 10 - 20 years to care is pretty slim and the amount of people who file a claim in the face of failure is negligible enough to be outweighed by the marketing benefits this brings in terms of sales.

Really it's most likely just marketing crap. I've had cheap DVDs and CDs fail in just a couple of years, not all of them, just the odd one or two, and I'm sure the expensive stuff will last much longer, but I sure as hell wouldn't bet my data on them no matter what inflated claim they can come up with (and then backtrack on using the disclaimers).

Re:Not Long Lasting

[tgd]

The shelf life is FAR longer than Slashdot nerds would have you believe.
No one specified a time frame here, certainly not the original story.

As far as I'm concerned, 100 years is more than adequate. Beyond that its someone elses problem.

The technology will change and people will have to move the data to another media well before then.

I've been burning optical media since about 1995. Back then a CD burner cost almost $2000 and the discs were $15 each.

I can say, with certainty, that well stored optical discs absolutely do NOT come anywhere close to meeting the shelf lives that are claimed by manufacturers today.

Of the gold discs I have from the mid 90's 100% of them are still readable, but beyond that, virtually every make and brand of media I've got has varying levels of failures up to about four or five years ago. So far I haven't had any fail since then. The failure rate approaches 100% for discs, regardless of brand, bought and burned between maybe nine and twelve years ago. I stopped burning CDs around that range of time, but my DVDs from that period have nearly as high failure rates, as well. I'd say the interim years its probably more like 10-20%, but it'll be five more years until I know if they start to fail at the same rate.

Keep in mind the warranty periods are based on two things -- the fact that virtually no one will ever file a claim for a replacement media, and the fact that the warranties explicitly do not cover losses of the data on the media. They can say 100 year shelf life because in five years if the media fails, no one is going to exchange it for a new version of a media they no longer use regularly, anyway.

The fact is, there's *no* single media durable enough for even mid-term storage at modern data densities. (And by mid-term, I mean "boy I'd like this pictures of my kids to still be readable when they get married" kind of range. Old megabyte-sized harddrives and old 80, 160, maybe 320KB floppies are largely still readable, if you can find the interfaces and hardware. Older low-density tapes are, too, but as I learned the hard way, if you don't write on the tape what software you used to record it, you're pretty much SOL if you want to read it in the future.

Effortless media-shifting is the only real solution these days -- keep copying them from one computer to another.

Re:M-DISC

[detain]

agreed http://www.mdisc.com/what-is-mdisc/ it looks bad-ass, lasts 1000 years, can withstand extreme heat, humidity, and light, tested by the DOD, and readable by normal dvd drives.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

[cullenfluffyjennings]

Statistically speaking, egyptian hieroglyphics carved in stone seem to be readable over long time periods.

Artificial Intelligence

[inquist]

What information has survived the longest? Perhaps the information encoded in DNA. But, to survive in harsh environments with the constant threat of destruction, new copies are made continually within cell nuclei.

Which leads to my suggestion. Maybe we don't just want our data preserved for millenia, we want it made better! Thus we should initiate a process of artificial intelligence, seeded by our own ideas but with freedom to innovate in years to come. Then, it can adapt in order to communicate with any future would-be readers.

Printed Morse Code

[Lawrence_Bird]

You can use a very small font and still be able to distinguish the three "characters" of dot, dash or space. Likewise, even faded the difference in size between a dot and dash should be discernable. As to encryption, it may suffice to just use a code book and keep that in a different location. But I think picking up page after page filled with morse code would deter most wannabe thieves.

ASCII punched into stainless steel tape.

[idommp]

Back in the days of yore [ late 60's ] I was a physics / computer science student who worked part time as a newspaper photographer. The newspaper got a newfangled computerized typesetter that used punched paper tape for it's input. The bootstrap program was about 10' of 1" wide paper tape. The machine crashed and had to be rebooted at least fifteen to twenty times a day. We didn't have a duplicator for punched tape and we were having to re-punch the entire program every five or six days. Until we found a punch that handled a thin stainless steel tape that the reader would accept. I still have several short programs that were read hundreds of times and have been sitting on a shelf for over 40 years. I can still read the data on the tape manually bit by bit and, if a machine existed, I'm sure the tape would still work fine. I'm pretty sure it'll still be both machine and human readable after another 500 years assuming it doesn't get hot enough to fuse the reel together or get exposed to enough radiation to make the stainless steel brittle. Program code was straight octal machine code and text was encoded as 7 bit ASCII with an 8th entropy bit.

Re:Simple comparison

[egcagrac0]

I was, of course, thinking of the Cauzin Softstrip.

Microfiche or microfilm

[cartman]

I'd bet you could pick up some used microfilm or microfiche equipment from an old library, newspaper, or business. That equipment was standard during the 1970s, and I'd guess there's still a lot of it around.

You can store hundreds of pages on a single small roll of microfilm.

Canon still makes equipment to scan microfilm into digital formats.

Re:Microfiche or microfilm

[mrego]

Microdots could store maybe 10 MB per printed page.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Good god.

[vlueboy]

If I put it on paper in some useful way and stick in a secure location, I don't have to worry about it again until the day I need the data.

A parallel was subconsciously nagging at me for hours and that sentence finally triggered what it was: I've seen this hard copy eagerness in the topic of Bitcoin wallet backups a few months back.
While you have more data at hand than a standard wallet file, you can learn from such the paranoid mining community. Much motivation is behind their protecting digital money by un-digitizing into paper form, and even into artsy representation that can be mailed to others.

I cannot recall what bitcoin forum link showed a python script taking the wallet.dat file and just printing it in large print, for a cycle to be completed by OCR'ing that back into digital form post-disaster. Something like that has already been suggested, and is a more general case involving OCR fonts.

Still, there's probably good results in seeing how serious miners keep their bits safe. For the common case of small rolled up bitcoin hard copies, https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/#security suggests Krylon preservation, waterproof paper, ziploc bags and so forth.

choices

[Tom]

It depends on what kind of information you have.

Information that is human-readable like account numbers and other details is something that especially in an emergency you might need to have ready, even if due to the emergency you lost access to your computer, scanner, etc. Heck, you might need access to it in order to get a new one.

There are special OCR-fonts that you can use to print out that information and be certain that the OCR will be painless. Use it, because keeping the data human-readable also leaves you with a backup option in case the restore doesn't work as expected (say, the paper got crumbled or smeared) - you can type it in.

For human-meaningless information, pure digital data, QR codes are probably fine because they allow for error-correction and are meant to be able to be read back even if there is noise in the input data, something that barcodes are not as good at.

But, frankly, why the fuck don't you just put your stuff on a CD, USB thumb drive or something like that and put that into the fire box ?

Re:Simple comparison

[bjs555]

How about writing the information in pencil on high quality paper? I understand that the second page of the Nicolay copy of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that was written in pencil in 1863 (reference: http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9503/gettysburg.html) is very readable to this day (image: http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gettysburgaddress/exhibitionitems/ExhibitObjects/NicolayCopy.aspx).

How do you backup your backup program?

[Capitaine]

How do you backup your backup program? I you use a special encryption and coding (e.g. barcode) program, you will need it in 10, 20, 30 years when you disaster actually happens. How do you make sure that the program you need to recover you data still is available?
Their is few doubts that OCR will still be available. However, barcodes and LUKS might be obsolete...

Re:How do you backup your backup program?

[whoever57]

How do you backup your backup program? ...However, barcodes and LUKS might be obsolete...

It's a backup, not an archive. If LUKS becomes obsolete, then I will migrate my backups to another format.

Encryption

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

The are encryption systems that you can do mentally. To stand up to a full attack by the NSA they may get a bit laborious (tbh, simply memorising the data is probably easier), but if you simply want to make it unprofitable to crack you can probably use http://www.schneier.com/solitaire.html.

Do not store your data in your safe.

[e70838]

Use crypto and only store the key. A key is small enough to be typed in without OCR. If your data is (correctly) crypted, there is no problem in leaving copies in the wild.

The only solution to protect data is duplication. There is no need for a safe.

For example, I would be really annoyed to lose all my digital pictures. There is a copy on the computer of my father (in another town). It is stored in a crypted (ecryptfs) directory because some pictures are personal. He does not have my password. I have also a backup of its data.

Re:Text. It's the only way.

[gl4ss]

oh they are available but why would you want write once?

You can encrypt something and still use OCR

[Spencer Drager]

Encrypt the files and then print out the raw data in hex. To reverse it, you use OCR, convert the hex values to data files and then unencrypt. Down side is that it's not human readable, but it might be more data-dense than barcodes. You'd just have pages and pages of: 41 35 55 c1 8e 8a 1e 0d 88 69 0e 9d 48 5c 30 ba 0d 86 9c ca 6e 32 12 b3 e2 87 fc 51 1d d0 62 76 5e dc f6 8c c5 a0 40 fa 49 78 a9 3a c2 bc 19 d5 ef 79 c9 07 6b 94 85 2b 8b 1b a6 3f 4c 2d 05 f7 06 48 e4 6f d0 b6 05 00 e0 40 3e a0 4a 1c 12 05 9b ed 7c b4 e0 0f ee 29 d1 64 75 5c d6 21 f7 34

Enigma

[trigggl]

Use an enigma app.

Etched carbonite!

[oldestgeek]

Stored in a salt mine.

Heck... yellow punch tape.

[niftymitch]

Do consider old yellow punched tape and print to hollerith cards.

You are on to some thing important. Digital media is much more sensitive to temperature than paper and fire safe safes commonly only rated for paper. Digital media does not survive on the dash of a car in many cases yet a paper map is fine.

Steganography?

[patrick.clemins]

What about some form of Steganography... that is, embedding the data in a picture. You'd likely have one reference picture and then embed the data in a slew of modified pictures. You'd definitely want to include some error correction, but with a little creativity and some playing around with it, it might be pretty data dense. I imagine too, that picking a good background image would help you increase data density in each picture, but I don't know enough about this to provide advice on that... Good luck!

Re:Steganography?

[RockDoctor]

What about some form of Steganography...

How is that going to help his storage problems? You've just substituted the relatively simple task of OCR (even if the data that is OCR'd is an encrypted data stream) with a tremendously more difficult task of detecting and breaking the steganography then additionally decoding it. Since steganography (as applied to images) typically hides the data in non-random distributions of the low-order bits of data bytes (leaving the high-order bits to continue to describe the masking image), then you are going to have to preserve the image quality to the last 1 or 2 colour hues, then scan it to that precision, then correctly break both the steganography and any compression or encryption.

The original problem was to store the data, not to hide it. The fact that there is a fire-safe data store involved should indicate to someone that there is data stored in this data store, and therefore that if there is an innocuous- looking picture in there, then steganography is going to be high on the list of suspicions.

It may be a silly problem, but that doesn't mean that it deserves a silly answer.

Microfiche/Microfilm

[DarthVain]

I am quite surprised I haven't seen anyone mention microfiche/microfilm yet.

It is still a currently accepted archival "technology" used to store countless hard copy records, by institutions that have to A) store tons of records, and B) store them for a very long time.

I wouldn't call it inexpensive, but it isn't all that expensive either considering alternatives. However you usually do large batch jobs, so you might only want to do a run every year or every 3, or 5 years.

The added bonus to being somewhat reasonable to catalog and search, being reasonably inexpensive, and having a long lifespan is the fact that as my air quote indicated earlier, the technology has been around for a very long time. The formats are mature, the readers are easy to come by and mature. Also if you are looking at OCR and keeping digital copies, it is much much easier to either hire out to a firm, or buy a scanner, that takes fiche in a hopper, or even easier film on a spool, and can quickly and automatedly go through your collection and record them into digital format. Depending on volume and document, however that is where you may run into some costs surprisingly, the storage and organization of the digital files.... (particularly if you want to host them someplace).

Anyway if you want a permanent hard copy, doing a microfiche/microfilm run every say 5 years and getting rid of your paper is a good idea.