Ask Slashdot: Storing Items In a Sealed Chest For 25 Years? 434
New submitter accet87 writes "We are celebrating the Silver Jubilee of our graduation next month and have come up with an idea where we will build an air-tight chest in which each of us will deposit something and will open the chest only on our Golden Jubilee, i.e. after another 25 years. I want to understand what kind of items can be safely stored for 25 years and what kind of precautions are required to be taken. I am sure things like paper, non-ferrous metallic objects, wood, etc., will hold up well. What about data storage electronically? I don't think CD/DVDs, etc., will be usable. Even if the data is retained, reading it in 2037 may be a challenge."
Re:Macbook Pro (retina) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Put stuff in sealed plastic cases? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Put stuff in sealed plastic cases? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have a 5 and 1/4 inch drive? :-o Put in the whole PC. I recently uncovered an old laptop at work with Windows 3.1 and it was fun playing with it again. (Mainly reinforcing what I already knew: Microsoft Windows prior to 95 and NT4 was complete garbage.)
It will be fun to look at the old Windows XP or Vista OS and say, "Man things were primitive back then. Only 2 gig of RAM? How did they ever manage to run with so little?"
Re:Macbook Pro (retina) (Score:5, Insightful)
Best to remove the battery now - if you can't figure out how to do that, buy something that can be serviced instead.
why not use a device with a removable battery and include a charger? I'm sure we'll still be using the same power outlets in 2037, US AC plugs have not changed since electricity became common. At least if the battery explodes or leaks it doesn't corrupt the device and the charger should provide power even with a completely dead or missing battery.
If including a charger is not possible, use any device that uses AA batteries. AA batteries have gone unchanged since they became a standard in 1947 [wikipedia.org] and they were in use long before becoming a standard. The also account for half of all battery sales, and with that many devices using AA batteries you can be sure standard AA batteries will be around for a long, long time.
All of the above. (Score:5, Insightful)
Make it a science project.
Put identical data on one of every type of storage technology and see which survives. In 25 years you will have a very interesting case study while being nostalgic about the data storage media used back when you were young.
If they all fail then laugh at how silly you were all those years ago and how you should have done x instead.
Outgassing Can Ruin Everything (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not a trivial request to ask how to make things survive a 25 year isolated containment, even if you solder or weld the outer container shut and it stays sealed.
Batteries, capacitors, wood, paint, plastics, bugs in the wood, polymer coatings can all outgas. Some plastics naturally keep changing very slowly as their molecular cross linking changes and plasticizers move to the surface.
Those outgassing chemicals can wind up interacting, or corroding if you wish, the other item's materials and you don't get what you think you will in 25 years.
If you actually put a battery in their you can get other reactions occurring very slowly as the battery discharges. Don't forget that many electronics use a milliamp or so to keep some functions ON all the time, even though the devices is supposed to be turned off. Batteries are notorious for having their liquids eventually leaking out.
When you handle all the items, getting ready to load the time capsule, there are going to be all sorts of finger oils and millions of bacteria that are on each piece you put in the container, plus what is on the inside of the container and its seal materials. Some bacteria are anaerobic, so just because there is no Oxygen (if you load the capsule with Nitrogen), doesn't mean there won't be live bacteria in there.
Lastly, if your container is totally sealed and outgassing raised the internal pressure, then chemical reactions can occur more rapidly.
Re:Put stuff in sealed plastic cases? (Score:4, Insightful)
A ten year old laptop with a CD drive (or a five year old one with DVD) is pretty cheap to include. I still have one computer with a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive and two more with just a 5.25" drive (no HDD). They last in storage excellent - I only use them a few times a year.
Re:Media will last longer than you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Why store the data in only one format? Why not put one copy on USB Flash, one copy on DVD-R and possibly one copy on some other flash with a different interface like SD?
Unless its allot of data this should be fairly cheap and odds are good that at least one of the three mediums will survive and you will have tools to read it easily. Watch your file formats too, i'd stick with lowest common denominator very standard stuff like jpg images, mpeg2video (main mode) with either ac3 or mp2 audio for videos, and mp3 for just audio.
The elephant in the room (Score:5, Insightful)
The elephant in the room that nobody is discussing... what's your container going to be made of? How are you going to seal it and keep it sealed? These are non-trivial questions. Containers react with the materials inside and corrode both inside and out. Seals dry out. Etc... etc...
There's a lot more to this than just the items inside. The container has to maintain its integrity too.