Best way to store a small amount of data?

The Big Lots near me is selling 8 GB Kodak flash drives for $10

14024 East Sprague Avenue Spokane (509) 927-0699

or

9612 North Newport Highway Spokane (509) 464-4843

 

A way would be to make two copies, each on a different brands of archival quality CD. Taio Yuden should be one of the brands.

Here's an article on the topic
Long-term personal data storage | ZDNet

Flash media is a bad choice.

 

A typical lifespan of a flash drive is supposed to be 10 years:but IMO, stated lifespans aren't really relevant. My family still has some 16mm home movies my grandparents made in the 50s and 60s. It's now getting more and more difficult to view them as the playback devices are not very popular these days. I've found the same is true for software/data I have saved from years back: specific software that can only run in DOS or Win 95 (and doesn't seem to work with Win XP/Vista/7). I would suggest not completely forgetting about what you store in your safe deposit box...but check on it every few years and update anything that need be. Doesn't hurt to have a thumb drive and a CD-R (or DVD-R).

 

CNET's ratings of flash drives.

If you want to cover all your bases, copy it onto a flash drive AND burn it onto a CD.

 

Since the information is "proof" only and does not need to be text or image searchable, I'd print it on acid-free archival paper, put the pages into archival sheet protectors, put it into a binder and stash it in a fireproof offsite storage facility that, considering it would be just a few binders, say, one file drawer in size, should rent you that drawer in their warehouse for, I don't know, $60 a year? 25 cents a day? All the problems of electronic longevity & retrieval disappear; the headache of remembering to upgrade every decade or so (which would be its own headache) all vanishes. Not everything on the planet has to be high tech.

 

Format is important too, pick a format that is likely to be readable well into the future.

.txt has been around forever and should be well into the future, but it's limited.

,rtf is a lot more capable, can be written by loads of programs and should be readable by software well into the future.

It would be a good idea to dig the archives out at last every 5 years and transfer them to a format that looks like it will be around a while and to fresh media that will be readable by computers for a while into the future. Microsloths formats are iffy for long term archives. For example, from the MS website...

 

All devices fail eventually, some sooner than later. A perfectly archived CD written in a format that is no longer used is worthless.

The only hope of long term storage is to recopy data to new media as it evolves. Consider what you would do with records stored on 8" floppy disks. The disks may or may not be in good shape, but where are you going to find a computer to read them on? CDs, even ones intended for archival service, are a media on the way out. USB flash drives are certainly convenient, but how long do you think they're going to be usable?

I think that JPEG and TXT are formats that will be used for a long time. Media is another matter. I'd say to store multiple copies on multiple media in multiple locations. And transfer that data to new media at least every 5 years.

 

USB is here to stay. The USB standard is such that it is backwards compatible. USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 will be around and easily available for at least a decade at a minimum.

Flash memory generally has a guaranteed data retention life of 100 years. EPROM and EEPROM are usually 2-10 years and then 5-40years average respectively.

The simplest long term solution is to just store it to a flash drive. To minimize risk further, put multiple copies of the same files on the drive. In the rare event that some electrons get corrupted, you would have another "chance" elsewhere. Keep it simple and format it with NTFS partition. That is readable now and will be for some time.

FYI, I have an 8086 AT machine that reads 5.25" floppies and 3.5" floppies that works just fine. If you keep the flash drive partitioned as NTFS or at a minimum FAT32 then it will be readable for a long while.

Any magnetic media (floppies, tapes, and hard drives) will lose data fastest over time if left idle. Optical media (CDs, DVDs, BluRay) lose data over time as well especially if exposed to light or temperature fluctuations. If you are storing it in a true bank deposit room, it should be relatively climate controlled and dark so that is not as much of a worry. Solid state memories like EPROM, EEPROM, and NAND Flash, will lose data at much slower rates and are currently the best if you are just going to leave it idle for a long while.

However, my suggestion for long term storage would be to outsource it. Doesn't matter what the media format is. As long as you have an NT program that can open the file, all NT OS's will be able to install that program and read that file. So even if you do store it as a doc file, keep a copy of Office somewhere. As long as you have a machine capable of installing Office on, you can read the file. Since you have mostly images, I would use jpg's if you need space and bmp's if you want quality with no compression but giant files. Take these files and either pay an actual data service center to hold it or upload it to a cloud service you trust. Think of the first as a 21st century safety deposit box. They automatically back up your file to multiple drives in multiple physical locations. The drives are constantly being updated and old data is refreshed. I trust Google with my data that I don't want locally. I just email it to my GMail account and it is available forever (7GB+ of free storage essentially). The caveats are what happens if the company goes bust? Well I trust Google and don't foresee them going bankrupt anytime in the near future.

I know you are an Apple person, so the iCloud may be a solution for you. However I would caution that Apple has a horrible record on backwards compatibility and formats. I can install any device I have ever owned on a Microsoft system on any other Microsoft system. I cannot install old hardware on new macs, and old software revisions are forced to be obsoleted by newer version installs. So since macs can read more global formats like NTFS and FAT32, just use that. If you make a HFS+ partition, my guess is you will be screwed in 10-20 years and you will have to bring out a mac from today to read it and only install software from today to open it.

 

You took the words out of my mouth.
How old are you?
OK...it doesn't matter really, but I presume that you're looking at 50 getting smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror rather than the other way around.

I know that the question is going to bring out all manner of goofy, theory rich opinions, and so I'll just concur with some of the ones above that answer your question rather than the question.

Get 2 thumb drives from different manufacturers. Don't sweat the format. You're not going to live long enough for technology to outrace your ability to retrieve the data.
Store one in a SDB and another in a fire-proof safe in another location, maybe even your casa. Banks do fail, and buildings do burn----but usually not on the same day, and if that happens then the data on the drives will probably be valueless.

You could trouble yourself to also burn a DVD (be sure to put in a sleeve and store it away indoors) in case something really daffy like a localized EMP wipes out the NAND memory in the flash drives, but like I said earlier...an event such as this would probably give you much bigger problems than not being able to retrieve your flash drive stored data.

Good Luck!

 

$#@!&* server!

Sorry for the double-tap!

 

Consider keeping one in the safe deposit box and one someplace else reasonably secure. Hidden in your home would be good enough for the second one. Like ETC(SS) said, banks do fail which could delay your access, random shit also happens.

If you are doings thing right you will have 4 copies. 2 flash drives, 1 on your computer and 1 in your regular backup. That should cover most events you would care to survive.

 

There are, but I don't think you will see any benefits of the higher end models.

Some things that set certain models apart:

• Write Speed
• Read Speed
• Hardware Encryption
• Physical Durability
• Electronic Durability (Data Retention)
• Automatic Block Management

You probably don't care if it takes you 1 second or 3 seconds to copy over a new file. Or if it takes 3 minutes instead of 10 minutes to read all the data back in the event of needing to. You may want hardware encryption. You are storing financial records, it would be wise. Physical durability is another one you are probably looking for, but the low grade plastic ones will survive most things no problem. The higher end ones can be waterproof, fireproof, and sealed in metal. Data retention on the cheap drives is still a century, maybe 50 years if you buy really cheap crap which is Bin2 or Bin3 NAND chips. Block management again probably not important because you aren't writing thousands of files every day using up the finite number of write cycles (hundreds of thousands per block) so even the basic devices will outlast your needs.


But if you want something snazzy, the IronKey line is considered one of the best. It is used (and certified for use) in military applications. It has built in cryptography chips and a hardware password lock. The internal components are sealed/potted in hard epoxy for tamper proofing the circuit but the bonus is that it becomes waterproof. It is also metal enclosed.



More info here: https://www.ironkey.com/demo-basic


But really, anything off the shelf from Walmart will work OK for your very basic application.

 

Ah but how do you transfer data from the 8086 machine to something else? Its connectivity consists of the floppies, a serial port, and a parallel port. You can't plug in a modern SATA hard disk, or for that matter even an IDE hard disk. NTFS didn't exist, and I doubt even FAT32. There's nothing to plug a modern network card into. Does the original printer still work?

The best way I can see is to write the data onto 3.5" floppies. Then you could purchase a USB floppy drive to copy the data to a modern machine. Or I suppose you could take a photograph of the screen...

Technology has changed so much that transferring 25 year old data is going to be a major project. Even when the 25 year old machine still works.

As for encryption, it's just another barrier at recovery time. Where do you store the encryption key? On a piece of paper with the media? What if someone else legitimately needs to see the data? I think physical security of the media is a better idea than any obscurity method.

 

It has an IDE harddrive in it. So I can take the hard drive out, hook it up to my modern PC and read it. I have the cylinder/blocksize/etc info written on the drive and as long as the BIOS supports that, it will work. I have a Win98 machine that has USB ports and networked to my home network that I know reads this hard drive with no issues.