How to store digital files for posterity? (hundreds of years)
I have some family videos and audios and I want to physically save them for posterity so that it lasts for periods like 200 years and more. This allows great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to have access.
From the research I did, I found that the longest-lasting way to physically store digital content is through CD-R gold discs, but it may only last 100 years. From what I researched, the average lifespan of HDs and SSDs is no more than 10 years.
I came to the conclusion that the only way to ensure that the files really pass from generation to generation is to record them on CDs and distribute them to the family, asking them to make copies from time to time.
It’s crazy to think that if there were suddenly a mass extinction of the human species, intelligent beings arriving on Earth in 1000 years would probably not be able to access our digital content. While cave paintings would probably remain in the same place.
What is your opinion?
Digital data is extremely short lived. Unless it’s being maintained well and copied, it will decay regardless of storage medium fairly rapidly. And as you point out data interface techniques are themselves quite short lived. Storing data as something accessible without specialist technology, so plainly readable, instructions on how to build the reader and decode the data, etc.
Future technology may improve this by having historians interested in historical records wanting ways to recover it, at least.