Quote: I continue to record family stuff every year, including grandchildren, and need to consider how to store the recordings for many years, ideally say 50 years so granchildren can share with their children.
At present they are all on mini DV tapes which I am capturing onto PC hard drive using PD9.

1) Tapes should keep, but problem maintaining playing device because lots of complicated mechanical parts in camera (in fact mine has just gone pop so had to borrow another). Also about to buy new camera which will use SD card so no tapes from now.

2) DVD just do not seem reliable, even in short term.

3) HDD, again lots of mechanical stuff to fail.

4) Friend has suggested SD cards, quite cheap 16G for £8.

What's everyone's thoughts.

For 50 years, there may not be any technology that exists today that will still be around in 50 years.

My personal opinion, is to use external Hard drives and update the data by copying to another storage media when the hard drives become unreliable.

Hard drives have a stated 10+ year reliability. You can find the failure rate for any hard drive on the manufacturer's web site.
The failure rate is based on continous operation over that 10 years (It is stated in hours).

I have seen failure rates of about 150,000 hours. If you put your calculator to that = 17.123 years.

24 hours times 365 days = 8760 hours per year.

50 years would take updating the data 3 times in the 50 years.

Since a external hard drive is not operating all the time, it would likely last a lot longer that 17 years.
An external drive is only running when plugged into the computer.

If it is crucial data copy to a USB external hard drive and put that hard drive in a bank vault.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Thanks for that Carl, but I would worry about the reliabilty data because I suspect it is based on the HDD being used more or less continuously. I would anticipate that my HDD would be used infrequently, say once every 10 years. Mechanical devices "like" to be kept moving in my experience and also HDDs would need the associated technology to enable them to be read.

What about SD cards, no moving parts, but would they retain the data over the years, maybe associated technology is simpler? and therefore more likely to survive. (I lost an SD card once and found it several months later in the mud, it still worked perfectly)

Surely this must be becoming an important subject with everyone having digital photos etc. I see you can buy "archive" quality DVD's with extra protective layers, but I just have so little confidence in DVDs generally.

PS when researching this on the Internet I saw a humerous comment " the world is divided into two sets of people, those who have had a HDD failure and those who are about to have one".

Quote: Thanks for that Carl, but I would worry about the reliabilty data because I suspect it is based on the HDD being used more or less continuously. I would anticipate that my HDD would be used infrequently, say once every 10 years. Mechanical devices "like" to be kept moving in my experience and also HDDs would need the associated technology to enable them to be read.

What about SD cards, no moving parts, but would they retain the data over the years, maybe associated technology is simpler? and therefore more likely to survive. (I lost an SD card once and found it several months later in the mud, it still worked perfectly)

Surely this must be becoming an important subject with everyone having digital photos etc. I see you can buy "archive" quality DVD's with extra protective layers, but I just have so little confidence in DVDs generally.

PS when researching this on the Internet I saw a humerous comment " the world is divided into two sets of people, those who have had a HDD failure and those who are about to have one".

Well I am in the first set, I have had hard drive failure. More than one. In both cases they were Seagate drives One was a 15 GB and one was a 20 GB. Those capacities is not made any more.

I really do not know how reliable SD cards are over the long term. I have had too many of them fail in normal use.
One thing about SD cards they are pretty much water proof. They are solid state devices and like any transistor, they are easy to burn up if the voltage applied is wrong.

I think the hard drive is an exception to Mechanical devices "like" to be kept moving. The construction of a hard drive does not require oil. the bearings are permanently lubricated, The platter is directly on the motor shaft. What Hard drives do not survive is high gravity. Do not drop one from 10 feet or so. Or Water. They would not survive a flood.

The big problem I see with optical media is the ability to read them years later.
Technology on Optical media changes so much.

Optical disks are not very reliable for long term data retention.

Currently the External Hard Drive connected by USB is the most reliable media now. As I said before, any backup media you choose now will need to be updated and the data refreshed every few years.

I know for a fact that the Floppy Disk was not a good Media for long term data storage. I have some 5.25 inch floppies that are hard to read. I also have some 3.5 1.44MB floppies that are hard to read. These disks were written about 1998-99, some of them are not readable at all.



Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

On the subject of solid state storage.

Do you remember the Smart Media card?
You have a hard time finding a card reader today that will read a Smart Media Card.

I have a Digital camera that uses a Smart Media Card. The only way to read the images from that card is via the camera connected by USB. (That camera is retired).

My point is SD cards may not be around in a few years nor will readers for SD cards.

When I bought that camera, Smart Media cards were popular at the time.

Look at the variety of solid state storage media today, what do you think will happen in the next 10 to 50 years?

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.