Ask HN: How and where do you store private file you want to keep forever?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9814973

by jit_hacker • 11 years ago

4 5 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

"Forever" is a very long time. Hopefully 60 more years if I'm lucky. Way long than most off the shelf storage devices will last.

I currently have about 2GB of personal files (and growing) that I want to retain the rest of my life. Nothing overly interesting, but some files contain sensitive information. I'll only add files once or twice a year, so low availability is fine.

My only real requirement is that I know it's secure. And I know I have the only key. So either I how the physical devices or I use strong encryption before sending it up.

How do you guys handle backups?

gcb02• 11 years ago

nothing is forever

jit_hacker• 11 years ago

Right. Of course not. "Forever" was a term relative to my lifespan.

gcb02• 11 years ago

high quality optical media stored away from any light.

autotravis• 11 years ago

Blockchain! But seriously, I'd do a rewritable optical media, a flash drive, and a spinning drive. I'd do checksums on existing data any time you write to it to ensure nothing has been lost. I'd also do some sort of versioning at each write and actually keep a full copy of the data before the write. That last part could get unwieldy if your data grows over a lot time.

And I would double each storage media and keep one set off site.

This is all a little much for anything less than a "I NEVER can lose this data" requirement.

dangrossman• 11 years ago

Print it out and lock it in a safe deposit box at the bank. If you can't print the material, put it on two flash drives or disks and put them in the box. Occasionally verify the drives or transfer to new media over time.

There aren't many alternatives that are both safer and more practical for the average person for long time scales. You probably don't want to spend a lot to keep 2GB of personal files stored. Any tech company or cloud storage solution is less likely to still be operating and still be offering the same storage services on decade scales than a bank.

A safe in a location other than a bank, like your home, is more likely to be stolen. In your home, a burglar can force you to open the safe. There's much lower chance of that happening at the bank.

Should an online service fail, you may lose your stored data without notice or recourse. A company can be raided and their servers pulled out of racks by the FBI because of something just one user of the service did. The FBI is less likely to show up at a bank and take other customers' safe deposit boxes.

Should a bank with safe deposit boxes fail, you are guaranteed access to your possessions by the FDIC. Either the FDIC will arrange for your branch to be taken over by another bank, or if no other bank wants to take it over, they will arrange to return the contents of your box to you. This happens immediately: the FDIC guarantees you will have access to your safe deposit box at a failed bank the very next business day should you want it.

I expect the federal government to still be around in 60 years. If they end the FDIC program, you can re-evaluate at that point.

Ask HN: How and where do you store private file you want to keep forever?

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