[ILUG] Storing for Historical Record? (OT)

[Padraig Brady]

Ronan Cunniffe wrote:
> Hi all,
>     I've just been asked to create a physically archivable copy of somebody's
> account.  Since the owner was a) an internationally renowned theoretical
> physicist, and b) still actively doing physics when he died, it is probable that
> his account contains unpublished papers and/or other work of significant
> historical value.
>     The archive is <100MB, I can guarantee darkness and coolness but not low
> humidity, and the result has to survive decades.  Lots of decades.
> 
> I was wary of CD-R, but am now leaning that direction having read
> www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html and some of the pages linked from it.  (Basically, if
> you choose good media, a good writer, handle like fresh eggs and store in
> dark/cold/dry, CD-R may be good for 75-100years.... where's that "mediocrity"
> de-motivator? :-)
> 
> Anybody got any better ideas, or links to discussions of this?
> 
> Ronan.

That's a bloody interesting/hard question.
The best you could do is update to the latest
media every 10 years or so. In 100 years
it will be extremly difficult to get hardware
to read CDs for e.g. What format did they
put the data on voyager on the laser disc?

Padraig.