A fairly future-proof solution is to scan the documents into an open format and save them as files in a simple file system (a subdirectory per year is probably

A fairly future-proof solution is to scan the documents into an open format and save them as files in a simple file system (a subdirectory per year is probably sufficient). I would name the files YYYY-MM-DD-<short_description>.pdf so they sort properly in the directory listing. For the scanned format, I would suggest PDF (OCRed to text would be nice to help with searching) or PNG. You will have plenty of warning before PDF (PNG) or the file system of choice goes obsolete and will be able to transcode/copy the data to the new format. Storage media is troublesome. CDs (DVDs) have a limited shelf life, see http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub121/sec4.html. I would suggest creating a checksum (e.g. MD5 or SHA) to at detect corruption. Hard drives are mechanical and can fail unexpectedly. Hard drives also have an interface (IDE/SATA/etc) obsolescence issue, although you should have plenty of warning before the interface is totally unsupported. Solid state drive (e.g. thumbdrives) also have lifetime concerns. The normal concern, write wear-out, should not be an issue, but the flash can lose its bits over the years. Grabbing a Spansion flash data sheet semi-randomly, it lists the data retention lifetime as 20 years. (http://www.spansion.com/Support/Datasheets/S25FL032P_00_05_e.pdf http://www.spansion.com/Support/Datasheets/S25FL032P_00_05_e...). If you are moderately paranoid, saving your data on two disparate media (e.g. DVD and thumb drives), saving one copy off-site, and rewriting onto new media periodically, say every 10 years, should go a long way. On the other hand, since most legal record keeping requirements are 7 years (IANAL - don't take my word on it), you probably can just let your data die with the media.