Like I’d imagine there’s gonna be a lot of rain over time if I want this time capsule to last like idk 10 years? 30 years?

Is there like a box so tough its indestructible?

Can animals dig it up if I bury it?

How deep do it bury it?

Is the earth’s magnetism gonna affect the hard drive? (Or is there a better medium?)

Like I want this to be like very low budget, I don’t have millions to build an actual timecapsule like some organizations have done. Is there some cheap box that’s waterproof to protect a hard drive from damage for like 30 years buried in the ground?

  • masterofn001
    44•3 days ago

    So, an atomic powered RAID array with SMART corruption correcting code attribute in a timed replacement sequence of a series of single platter, low RPM, drives, using ZFS?

    But apparently, using a simple archival quality DVD+R or Blu-ray would work. (Don’t forget to include the hardware so you have something that can read it in the future.)

    Apparently verbatim gold archive DVD+r has been rated for between 32 and 127 years with a minimum 18.

    Some Blu-ray from a few corps is rated at 50 years.

    Under ideal conditions.

    However, I’ll stick to my crystal skulls and their magic alien data storage.

    Also: https://github.com/usnationalarchives/digital-preservation

    https://www.archives.gov/preservation/storage

    Sidenote: my few Linux machines are all running on HDDs that are each at least 10 years old. With additional internal and external 5" and external 2.5" drives that are just as old. My oldest is probably about 15.

    Thank the Linus for smartmontools and smartd/smartctl.