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This continues to be a good point and for years my dad, a architect, has told the story of a wise(?) records department he consulted with that demanded their bu

This continues to be a good point and for years my dad, a architect, has told the story of a wise(?) records department he consulted with that demanded their budget be spent on good passive temperature and humidity control for a bigger paper records storage space rather than power/cooling for a small data center. BUT. I would not give up hope on old digital storage mediums. I have recently read a casually stored CD-R containing code i wrote 25 years ago with surprisingly no issues. I know of friends who have read the 40 year old floppies from their childhood after discovering them in the garage. My ROM based game cartridges also read fine after 2 decades in an unheated barn. curiousmarc and friends (youtuber) have read the runtime state of the memory of Apollo-era computers among other things. Correspondingly, nearly all of the paper records I've come in contact with over the years have been disposed of, damaged or last (many of them pictures and memorabilia). I think the issue we face is a lot about choosing what to preserve more than what medium to preserve it in.

nix23 4y ago
Why not do it like Github? It's a 1000 years lifespan: https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/ https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/ https://www.piql.com/case-studies/github-chooses-piql-for-perpetual-data-storage/ https://www.piql.com/case-studies/github-chooses-piql-for-pe...
- mmarquezs 4y ago
  Here explains more about their PiqlFilm if somebody is curious like me: https://www.piql.com/about/technology/ https://www.piql.com/about/technology/ I also I always find it very amusing that some of my shitty code is preserved in the Artic due to this GitHub project.
  - nix23 4y ago
    >my shitty code is preserved in the Artic due to this GitHub project Look i was just happy that mine was not used in a mars mission ;)
rvense 4y ago
> I have recently read a casually stored CD-R containing code i wrote 25 years ago with surprisingly no issues. Glad to hear it. The opposite happened to me, I archived a bunch of music I had made to CD-R in 2004. They're now unreadable. I do still have the final renders of the tracks I finished, but the source files are gone, along with a bunch of sketches, notes and pictures from that time. I'm not sure what I'd do with them, but I wish I still had them.
- GTP 4y ago
  If you still have them on hand, give IsoBuster a try. I used it in the past to read data from old CDs that were unreadable otherwise and had very good results. https://www.isobuster.com/ https://www.isobuster.com/
aperrien 4y ago
I can attest to 40 year old floppies stored in a barn as a viable storage mechanism. I was able to retrieve almost all of the code that I wrote in my childhood this way. I had no idea that those old Apple 2 and Commodore 64 disks would actually still work!

nix23 4y ago

Why not do it like Github? It's a 1000 years lifespan: https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/ https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/ https://www.piql.com/case-studies/github-chooses-piql-for-perpetual-data-storage/ https://www.piql.com/case-studies/github-chooses-piql-for-pe...

mmarquezs 4y ago
Here explains more about their PiqlFilm if somebody is curious like me: https://www.piql.com/about/technology/ https://www.piql.com/about/technology/ I also I always find it very amusing that some of my shitty code is preserved in the Artic due to this GitHub project.
- nix23 4y ago
  >my shitty code is preserved in the Artic due to this GitHub project Look i was just happy that mine was not used in a mars mission ;)

rvense 4y ago

> I have recently read a casually stored CD-R containing code i wrote 25 years ago with surprisingly no issues. Glad to hear it. The opposite happened to me, I archived a bunch of music I had made to CD-R in 2004. They're now unreadable. I do still have the final renders of the tracks I finished, but the source files are gone, along with a bunch of sketches, notes and pictures from that time. I'm not sure what I'd do with them, but I wish I still had them.

GTP 4y ago
If you still have them on hand, give IsoBuster a try. I used it in the past to read data from old CDs that were unreadable otherwise and had very good results. https://www.isobuster.com/ https://www.isobuster.com/

aperrien 4y ago

I can attest to 40 year old floppies stored in a barn as a viable storage mechanism. I was able to retrieve almost all of the code that I wrote in my childhood this way. I had no idea that those old Apple 2 and Commodore 64 disks would actually still work!