What is the best long term data storage medium?

[Joelacrane]

My dad has bunches of pictures that he has been taking with his digital cameras over the years, and the other day he asked me "What is the most long lived and reliable storage format available? CD's?"

He wants to be able to put all of his put all of his pictures in one safe retreiveable location that will last for years and years and years. For the average person on the boards here, its no problem to copy pictures from computer to computer as we upgrade, but he doesn't operate like that. It needs to be simple, and it just needs to always work.

According to Wikipedia, CD-Rs and CD-RWs only last 25 to 30 years. What do you think? Portable USB large capacity hard drive?

[Sven Johannsen]

Nothing authoritative here, just my gut feel. CDs or DVDs. The life of the media is somewhat an estimate. The ability to write these media at home economically is not that old. I figure anything I have done will last 15-20 years easily. Within that time, I expect some new storage format will have been developed, and mainstreamed, to which I can transfer important stuff.

Right now making picture CD/DVDs is dirt simple, and cheap. Making copies is as simple and cheap.

Rotating media is much more expensive per capacity, more so with duplicates, and much more prone to physical failure.

[Cybrid]

Joel,
The most honest answer is we don't know. The tech is too new and outdates too fast.
What are the odds your son will know how to use a CD player?

Commercial CD's last 15-20 years but home-made ones have a lower estimate (5-10 years)
Commercial CD's are made by a ablative process which physically pits the CD's. Home-made ones are dependent on a chemical process. The laser heats and discolors. These CD's are heat sensitive.

Disk drives are more prone to failure. Plus due to cost...you're more likely to have "all your eggs in one basket".

Flash is supposedly indefinite but is not old enough to have actual estimates. Costly too.

Tape seems the oldest and most favored but very expensive. Prohibitively so.

Currently the strategy seems to be burn CD's and test and reburn every 5 years. Use the expensive ones.

CD=DVD's too.

[Joelacrane]

Ok, CDs/DVDs in a dark, room temperature place, reburned and tested every five years. I'm sure something new will keep popping up to transfer to every now and then. As always, thanks guys!

[Cybrid]

Ok, CDs/DVDs in a dark, room temperature place, reburned and tested every five years. I'm sure something new will keep popping up to transfer to every now and then. As always, thanks guys!Colder if possible :) A wine cellar...

[Nurhisham Hussein]

...with as low a humidity level as you can manage.