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From: Justin on 14 Jul 2010 16:23
No, not Apple Time Machine, but an actual time capsule.
I have been asked to put together an external USB hard drive; format it
and put a bunch of pictures, videos - you name it on there.
It, along with other trinkets will be sealed in a container and buried.
At first I was thinking ext4 since it is non proprietary. Or ext2 for
the same reason and the fact it is non-journaling.
NTFS? Maybe but I don't know what form M$ will be in circa 2110.
Fat16/32 - out of the question since some files will be bigger than 4GB.
What about fat64/exFAT? Is there a utility to format a *hard drive* to
fat64?
I'm not even considering Apple's HFS+.

Since most of us (myself included) won't be around when this thing is
opened this is more of a thought exercise than actual task.
From: Justin on 14 Jul 2010 19:39
On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:51:14 -0700, Ed Light wrote:

> You could make a volume of each file system, with duplicate data, in an
> extended partition. Best to bury two duplicate drives, maybe of
> different brands. Maybe they should be hermetically sealed? Include some
> DVD's in case the hard drives lock up? How about some SSD's?

I would rather stick to one partition and one filesystem. I figure over
the course of time a single filesystem would be easier to read. But your
idea does have merit.
The entire time capsule will be hermetically sealed. I was going to get
an aluminum enclosure and carve the type of filesystem into it.
DVDs are out of the question. Even the best quality DVDs only last ten
of twenty years. Those cynanine chemicals break down pretty easily, even
on archive quality media.
Maybe some USB drives.
From: Arno on 14 Jul 2010 20:50

Ah, this one is easy. Since your hdd has about a 30 year
(both hardware and interface availability) survival time,
use anything currently supported by a Linux kernel.

If you want pictures, documents, etc. to survive, use
a high-quality paper and high-quality one sided b/w laser
printing. This can reasonably be expected to survive
several hundred years when kept dry.

Bottom line: Wrong approach. BTW, a SLC (!) FLASH drive
gives you 10-20 years data retention. Better are MOD
(> 50 years, but drives may be a problem) and archival
tape. I do't think there is any digital storage medium
around at this time, that is suitable for a time capsule.

Arno

Justin <justin(a)nobecauseihatespam.org> wrote:
> No, not Apple Time Machine, but an actual time capsule.
> I have been asked to put together an external USB hard drive; format it
> and put a bunch of pictures, videos - you name it on there.
> It, along with other trinkets will be sealed in a container and buried.
> At first I was thinking ext4 since it is non proprietary. Or ext2 for
> the same reason and the fact it is non-journaling.
> NTFS? Maybe but I don't know what form M$ will be in circa 2110.
> Fat16/32 - out of the question since some files will be bigger than 4GB.
> What about fat64/exFAT? Is there a utility to format a *hard drive* to
> fat64?
> I'm not even considering Apple's HFS+.

> Since most of us (myself included) won't be around when this thing is
> opened this is more of a thought exercise than actual task.

--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: Arno on 14 Jul 2010 20:54
Ed Light <nobody(a)nobody.there> wrote:

>> Maybe some USB drives.

> How much data is there? You could use SSD's.

SSDs are absolutely terrible for long-term storage.
The cells _will_ loose their charge. With SLCs you
should get something like 20 years, but it already is
a stretch. MLCs are more in the <5 year data retention
range. I had one quality USB stick by PQI that gave
be random reads after a year. After formatting it
worked fine again, but I strongly advise to not
use SSD/FLASH for long-term storage.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans
From: do_not_spam_me on 14 Jul 2010 22:05


Arno wrote:
> Ah, this one is easy. Since your hdd has about a 30 year
> (both hardware and interface availability) survival time,
> use anything currently supported by a Linux kernel.
>
> If you want pictures, documents, etc. to survive, use
> a high-quality paper and high-quality one sided b/w laser
> printing. This can reasonably be expected to survive
> several hundred years when kept dry.
>
> Bottom line: Wrong approach. BTW, a SLC (!) FLASH drive
> gives you 10-20 years data retention. Better are MOD
> (> 50 years, but drives may be a problem) and archival
> tape. I do't think there is any digital storage medium
> around at this time, that is suitable for a time capsule.

Not a substitute for printed paper, but how about one of the oldest
recordable optical mediums, Plasmon WORM disks?

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