Long-Term Personal Data Storage?

BeanBagKing writes "Yesterday I set out in search of a way to store my documents, videos, and pictures for a long time without worrying about them. This is stuff that I may not care about for years, I don't care where it is, or if it's immediately available, so long as when I do decide to get it, it's there. What did I come up with? Nothing. Hard Drives can fail or degrade. CD's and DVD's I've read have the same problem over long periods of time. I'd rather not pay yearly rent on a server or backup/storage solution. I could start my own server, but that goes back to the issue of hard drives failing, not to mention cost. Tape backups aren't common for personal backups, making far-future retrieval possibly difficult, not to mention the low storage capacity of tape drives. I've thought about buying a bunch of 4GB thumb drives; I've had some of those for years and even sent a few through washers and driers and had the data survive. Do you have any suggestions? My requirements are simple: It must be stable, lasting for decades if possible, and must be as inexpensive as possible. I'm not looking to start my own national archive; I have less than 500GBs and only save things important to me."

EASY!

[The Yuckinator]

Parchment. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember paper? That actually roots after a period of time.

That's why paper is specifically prohibited on my network.

Re:Amazon S3

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and it's better than dirt.

Obviously the best storage method ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Encrypt your data
2) Tack it onto the end of some anime or porno mpg
3) upload to kazaa/gnutella/whatever

It'll still be circulating the net long after our grandchildren are dead.

Stone tablets

[DaveLatham]

Very durable. Write speed is a bit slow though...

Re:Ask Slashdot AGAIN

[eclectro]

How many times has this question been asked on Slashdot?

It needs repeated backing up.

Re:Not being answered

[Albert Sandberg]

well the backups storing the questions have been lost.

Re:Quality DVDs, archival storage, repeated backup

[Anonymous Coward]

Because nobody wants to learn perl or bash, and C/C++ is just overkill.

Re:Not enough history

[Anonymous Coward]

This "ask slashdot" question is like masturbation. It is kinda fun but, in the end, pointless. The answers haven't changed much since last month (or whenever it was posted last) but it will still probably get 500 responses. fapfapfap

Teganography

[fucket]

Which, of course, refers to the process of getting the data (in binary form) tattooed on your body by tattoo artist Tegan Stadnyck [teganink.com] of Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Re:Teganography

[tomhudson]

Actually, its steganography, but I used typoganography to hide the "s" :-)

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it ...

Re:Amazon S3

[Myrddin Wyllt]

Of course Amazon will always be there, just like Ford and GM....

Re:Flash drives

[synthespian]

Ok, dudes, if he's got radiation problems, he's got bigger problems than data storage.