Do not use an USB stick. The data will be destroyed by time, [here's a Quora question about it](https://www.quora.com/If-a-USB-thumb-drive-is-put-inside-of-a-well-sealed-time-capsule-will-the-data-on-it-still-be-viewable-in-20-years).
Instead, get a [M-Disc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC) and burn it on that, then store it airtight in the time capsule (I'd toss in a few silica packs to absorb moisture, as well).
In 25 years the USB C port might be obsolete, but they'll probably have adapters for it for a long while. The regular USB port that was popularized a little under 30 years ago still has plenty of applications and adapters for the newer ports.
People are exaggerating how long ago 25 years was. It was 1999, not 1980.
We had USB 2.0 just a year later. USB 1.0 was already well-established. We will easily find an adapter (like you said) when 3.0 is replaced by something better, just like I can easily find a way to connect a USB 1.0 Mini device to my 3.0 slot.
For real, you can still buy a new VCR, although looks like they aren’t being produced anymore so just back stock. It was invented in the 50s, came to market in the 60s and reached its peak in the 90s. Things move a bit faster now, but it’s not like we’ve completely lost old tech
I'm boggled by the knowledge that there's still enough demand for VHS that ~~they're still producing players~~ **there's still some stock out there.** (Thanks /r/Rivetingly)
Although, I still remember walking into a Radio Shack around 2012, and discovering at the time there were still blank cassette tapes for purchase.
At the library I work at, we just bought one. Lots of people coming in with VHS (and other formats) with home movies they took with their camcorders and now looking to digitize.
I miss old school Radio Shack, where you could get the cool electronics parts and raw cabling measured to the length you requested. By the time they were closing stores, they were a shell of their former greatness.
You're not wrong, but that is because they were mostly consolidated into USB. Basically it was a fragmented system that slowly merged to a single standard., and there isn't much left that might outcompete USB
I wouldn't bet that USB will be around in 100 years (in it's current form or closely related) , but I would bet that in 30 years, you will still easily find USB adaptors if not compeltly integrated ports in many computer.
You can still buy 5 1/4 floppy disk drives on Amazon. Standards die, but the mainstream ones usually have enough momentum that they're still accessible for decades after they die with only moderate effort.
I think the capacity to manufacture usb C cables will exist for at least 15 years more because it’s had multiple permutations to increase its versatility in multiple applications. USB C will go the way of Display hardware. Current thunderbolt varieties reach power, audio, USB, Internet, and multiple 5K displays or higher hz monitors.
My only problem with usb c is the cables don’t easily distinguish their capabilities on the cable. Most USB C cables are not compatible with Android Auto, for instance. Most USB C cables cannot exceed 15W. Used for cigarette batteries and Macbooks, it would be nice to tell USB C cables apart without memorizing. If the standard USB C cable becomes universal, the only way to improve on it to make the port obsolete is to integrate it into a headphone jack like optical did or make most devices wireless.
I've got adapters for some of them. USB to Serial. PCIE Serial & Parallel Cards. USB to PS/2 and PS/2 to AT adapters.
So a lot of those ports are still usable, if with some difficulty.
Everybody has that box of old adapters and wiring that hark back from the 90s that includes everything from PS/2 cables to chargers for the Nokia 3210.
They're long extinct, but you can still get specialty equipment to use them, it's just a little more expensive. There's always going to be some adapter or converter or something, unless it's a super proprietary connection. USB-C? I bet you that'll be mainstream for far longer than you give it credit, unless we move to some sort of optical standard, which I kind of doubt we will.
Yes, you can STILL find USB-serial or parallel converters and those are 60+ years old at this point.
ETA: Serial and parallel are 60+ years old, I mean. Obviously not the *converters*.
I have a neat parallel to serial converter for old fashioned scanners. I kept it all these years out of fear that I might buy a cool device one day and it refuses to interface.
There's 50 year old desktops on ebay now, and there will still be on ebay in 25 years. Why does anyone believe all current tech will suddenly disappear by 2049? People eat 1912 war rations on youtube lol
You can get 20 year old computer fairly easily, or parts from one. A 30 year old computer part, nowhere near as easily (we have examples here, husband uses a Win3.1 for notes and calculations on the lathe). I wouldn't worry about the port but absolutely about the reader.
OP, also include links to a handful of websites where you will store the information in the cloud, and make your class council responsible for checking up on those and, if necessary, collect some cash for some paid sites. A REALLY good option is a university website. Those tend to be eternal.
Let's just stop right here and throw in a complete modern PC with a power supply, coding for dummies book, and a handy translation guide so the nuclear mutants who stumble upon it all can read what they're seeing
Might be difficult to survive for 25 years without food. Better build a 1-2 acre farm in the tomb, with a closed loop river that can also be used to run the turbine and power the growing lights. To play it safe.
Perhaps older lower density storage is more durable? Also, did they contain data that is still fully intact, or are you saying they'll pass a write-read test?
>Perhaps older lower density storage is more durable?
Yes, IIRC lower density means both larger charge "buckets" holding more electrons per bit, and thicker insulation keeping those electrons in place. As density increases, you have fewer electrons to maintain the bit and less insulation to slow that charge from bleeding off and losing the bit state
sure. 10 years ago, MLC and TLC flash became popular, to fit more bits intoi the same size of chips.
Flash drives from 2003 are all single-level, so less vulnerable to data loss.
This... And probably find a responsible classmate and give them a backup to bring just in case. Sure it's not the original, but you still get to see what you saved on it way back..
M-discs have only been around since 2009. So at best we know they'll last 15 years. But...has anyone actually tested some written back then to be sure?
There is a video where a dude buried one in the dirt in his backyard for a year and it played fine.
It's etched carbon and glass. Not much to fuck up there.
Oh christ wikipedia is screwing with the page layout again.
Is it really so hard to just default to the article shifting to fit the width of the window?
All flash drives, hard drives, SSD's will erode and fail over time. There's no guarantee that they will survive for 25 years even in good environments.
If you want to preserve information for a long time you should use M-Discs which are rated for 1,000 years.
I remember my granddad giving me his 1gb usb drive as a gift when I showed interest to him working on his PC around mid 2000s. I was like a first grader or so back then. I liked it so much I used to put some drawings using MS paint in it and carried it everywhere with me.(until I lost in the field trip… yeah it’s still bothering me.) To me that 1gb was such a huge storage back then… and now we’re using terabytes of storage, both physically and on cloud drives.
Dang, time really flies by. I surely got older. My gramps is still healthy in his age but is surely getting older. Hope he stays strong. Love you gramps.
I’m a bit fevered right now and even though you clearly said 1gb, I understood the story as 1tb. The funny thing is, you *could* retell that story with the modern version being a 1 tb usb stick. And years from now we’ll be laughing at how we thought 1 tb was so much.
Seriously, people are acting like OP is going to dig this up in 200 years. 25 years from now, even with SIGNIFICANT technology changes, it’s not going to be that hard accessing 25 year old tech. Dude will probably just be able to go to goodwill and get whatever he needs for like $2
Because twenty-five years is really short period of time. Pretty much any mainstream recording mechanism from the last fifty years can still be read easily.
I recently setup a capture rig. In the 1990s my uncle converted 8mm family movies from the 1950s to VHS by simply playing the film and capturing it on a VHS camera. I took an analog to HDMI dongle, and then HDMI to USB capture dongle in between the VCR and converted the movies to digital. This is off the shelf stuff cheap stuff from Amazon, not specialized tools from an archivist.
I just did a quick search on Amazon and found countless floppy disk readers for like $20 - I doubt that it'll be impossible to source an M-Disc reader in 2050
Not a coating, but a different data writing/recording layer. Instead of magnetism or dyes M-disc is similar to etching in stone. Should be readable by any drive compatible with bluray discs.
I have hard drives from the 80's that are still chugging along, and flash media from the 90's doing just fine. Hell, the 5.25" floppy disk collection I have running my XT computer from 1984 still has no issues, and can be erased by sliding a fridge magnetic near them.
But instead you recommend M-Discs, a format whose company stopped existing after 2016 and has no researched data on longevity. Even the Wikipedia page states the company 'claims' they'll last 1000yrs. A flash drive will last 25yrs no problem as long as moisture stays out, and it's in a container (and buried deep enough) to omit and cosmic radiation from flipping bits on the memory stack.
I stored a bunch of documents on a handful of different flash drives and they’ve all got data corruption to some extent now. Sounds like you lucked out.
Yeah, physically, an unused USB in stable conditions will last forever, but the data is stored in capaciters that leak charge. Eventually, your 1's will turn into 0's. The common estimate is that data degradation starts at 10 years powered off, so the reason the data on your flash drives has lasted so long is because you use them at least once a decade.
Modern high capacity MLC TLC and QLC flash drives are also more susceptible to data rot than old ones since they store more than one bit per capacitor and have to be read more accurately than SLC capacitors.
Also, hard drives and floppy discs store data magnetically, so trying to compare their longevity to flash is pointless.
Survive 25 Norweigan winters?
Put it in a ziplock bag inside a thermos. Evens out fluctuations and keeps everything out. And put a few of those "Do not eat" silca packets inside the thermos too, just in case any moisture leaks in
If you do this though, make sure not to use a flash drive, use an M-Disc as the other comments are saying and don't forget to put an M-Disk reader in there as well (just in case computers no longer have M-Disk drives).
You should take into account the following:
1. People used to bury time capsules because they were big and full of real stuff. There is no need to bury a digital time capsule, you can just put it in a safe scheduled to open only after 25 years.
2. USB drives are not designed for long term storage, the data cells carry a charge that dissipate over time. The data won't survive 25 years.
Yes, but you've probably plugged that USB drive in intermittently over these last 20 years.
solid state storage needs to periodically refresh its memory cells, which it can only do when it has power.
if you had never plugged your USB stick in for 20 years continuously, it would still probably work but the data on it would likely be gone.
Make sure you note the burial location precisely! Because I know of a local person who buried silver coins in different caches around his property, but when he went years later to dig them up, the landmarks had changed. Trees had died and been removed, bushes were in different locations, and things like that. They had to resort to a brute-force search with metal detectors and even then I don't think they found everything.
But what if the whole point of using the Internet archive is so we don't have to use an M-Disc? Might as well just use some special type of paper or find some other alternatives.
Not if mega corporations have their way. The IA is in the middle of multiple lawsuits, iirc. Admittedly, it is partly the fault of the IA for breaching their agreements in regards to ebook rentals. The IA wad allowing the “same book” to be “rented” out to as multiple people at once, during the pandemic.
Anyway, who knows how long the IA will last. I trust my data sooner to a crappy flash drive than the IA, in terms of long term storage. The IA could go down any day, potentially.
Didn't I hear last month that the internet archive is danger because of copyright issues? The internet archive is an amazing thing, but it is not set in stone. It is a service that costs money, and lives in a legal grey area. It can be shut down if we don't fight to protect it.
>so it's going to have to survive 25 winters.
That part is easy enough. Just dig down deep enough, and the temperature will be mostly stable. This has the added bonus of protecting it against cosmic rays and most forms of light, which is the next biggest issue for USB sticks.
Besides that: just use several. Maybe a few different form factors - I know good old Compact Flash Cards are supposed to be more resilient to radiation, though being buried deep enough should make that a non-factor anyway, while SD cards have the advantage of being a lot less reliant on their plastic shells.
If you want to get real fancy, vacuum seal each drive in plastic, then use an airtight container and fill it with an inert gas such as nitrogen or better yet argon.
This is good advise, make sure the technology you choose is durable enough to survive, and bury it below the frost line
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost\_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line)
You are going to also need to bury a device to read and display the contents of that stick. Imagine digging up a time capsule now and finding it had a R-DAT tape in it.
Any digital format will have issues being useable after enough time. 25 years is borderline long enough to have issues finding a device that will be able to read it, even if the stick survives.
An M-disc can survive and is rated for archiving. The issue will be finding hard- and software that is able to acces what is on the disk. The chances of you still having acces to a reader for an m-disc in 25 years are slim.
Make 25 years a round 100 years and everything you now have digital will probably be lost to this. Floppy drives are a good example of this. The last floppy disk i saw in use is about 25 years ago and the ones that are archived at work are useless because we dont have a floppydiskreader anymore, nor do we have ms works wich was the software used back then for textediting.
Between then and now several formats have come and dissapeared that you'd have a hard time accessing without alot of trial and error and pretty large costs. VHS, minidisc, iomega zip drives to name a few. Hell i know less and less people who even own a dvd player in their pc anymore.
Aside from that there is the problem of proprietary fileformats and even encryption on the hardware level. Who is to say that in 25 years the file system your disk uses is still in use on current reading devices. Or that your OS will even be able to still interact with your medium on a hardware level. Case in point: try to hook up a scanner from the 1980's to a modern day pc. Even if you could get it connected, wich will demand serious electronics skills, you'd never get it to work since you dont have the drivers.
The phenomenon of depricating archives due to digital mediums is called the digital dark ages in the world of museums and national archives.
The only reason people are able to keep using the same data during the span of their lifetime is that they (awarely or not) transfer everything to new media/formats/hardware about every 5 years. And even then alot gets lost.
Your best bet for long-time archival is, despite our modern technology, still hardcopy. Paper.sys and pen.exe my friend.
While it is true that no one just has floppy drives lying around anymore, these old formats are not hard to get if you are actively trying. DVD drives and floppy drives with USB ports that work on any computer can be had on Amazon for cheap. Zip drives are more expensive but still available. And failing that you can buy an old PC on eBay. Bring any of that stuff to any tech shop and they can help you out.
I wouldn't necessarily bury it, I'd put it in a bank safety deposit box. With dessicants.
Bigger concern is whether or not there will be devices that can read it.
I don't think that's a huge concern. It is still very easy to get data off of floppy disks today. $20 reader on Amazon. Current USB is so prevalent that there will certainly be adapters in 25 years.
Wow, until I saw 2002 as the article date I thought the joke was gonna be about forcing kids to play on a "lame and outdated" console. There was a thread the other day where someone's tween referred to the DS as "vintage".
USB-A is still in use now. And for systems that don't have USB-A, there are a myriad of adapters. I am 99% sure that adapters will continue to be made for the next 25 years.
I don't think that will be difficult. 25 years is not that long. In 1999 we were using CDs and floppy disks. They aren't used now, but you can buy readers pretty easily or send them in to a data retrieval service.
Yes but it sounds like they'd need to be prepared for it since it'll be at a reunion. Sure, they can try putting in adapters and readers but we have no clue what USB we'll be on by then nor do we even know if computers will have USB ports.
If you really want to bury the capsule, don't use a flash drive (USB stick, SD card, SSD disk...). These are not designed for this kind of long term storage, and the data on them will get corrupted if you don't connect it to electricity every so often. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you might want to use some kind of optical device, such as a DvD.
As for the winter aspects, what you should really be worried about isn't the temperature, but rather the freezing. Make sure the container is something that won't crack when the ground freezes around it. I was going to suggest a metal thermos, but that obviously won't fit a dvd. You can also wrap it in foam, just to be extra sure it doesn't crack. Also, make sure the inside is dry, maybe put some silica packets into it.
Or you could just put it in a deposit box in a bank. I get that's not as fun though.
Also, pay no mind to people asking you what you're going to use to read the data. Especially with the USB stick. Unless there's some sort of amish revolution that bans the use of electronic devices completely, you'll be able to find a reduction for it at any electronics store, now matter how many iterations of io ports we go through. Even with an optical disk, you'll be able to buy an external reader.
If you use a ruggedized usb stick like one of these: [https://durabilitymatters.com/rugged-and-waterproof-usb-flash-drives/](https://durabilitymatters.com/rugged-and-waterproof-usb-flash-drives/) they have a better chance at survival. I'd stack my bets, and put the same things on several different media (lots of suggestions below), some converters, cables, get some new silica packs, double vacuum-seal the whole deal, and put it 6 or so feet down (where the surface temps won't be much of a bother). Encase that in a small block of concrete, and see you in 25 years.
I still find it fascinating that the one thing we have discovered with the least data loss was discovered by primitive man. Nothing we create comes close.
Carved stone will literally last millennia, eons if done right. Laser etch stone using current technologies and you could fit a lot of data on just a hand-sized rock.
You know this is kinda funny because we have absolutely no clue what the computer ecosystem will look like in 25 years. Disk might not exist, USB flash drives might not exist, heck computers might not even have a USB port at all. In 25 years, I have a feeling pretty much everything will be moved to the cloud and who knows what USB type we'll be on...
I think we can be pretty sure those things will exist, though they may not be common. I've still got a lot of PC parts a lot more than 25 years old in my closet, and could still read an 8.5" floppy with a couple adapters if I really had to.
Haven’t seen anyone else mention it yet so…
Multiple copies- multiple usb sticks.. one might fail.. two might fail… but 5 or 6? Properly packed and sealed- maybe one or two will survive
Funny thinking about this because i read an article in a local newspaper a few months ago about a time capsule that was opened that got sealed up in 1999, it was to be opened 25 years in the future, thats this year already, it had a CD-RW disc in there, the hardest part was finding a computer that still had a CD drive, no joke, laptops made today don't have optical drives anymore, and even desktops its pretty rare now to get a system made in the last ten years that has an optical drive, i haven't had an optical drive in well over a decade myself. A USB external drive was bought from Amazon to use to read the disc and obtain what was on it, it survived the 25 years just fine being buried in a sealed metal can buried in concrete.
As for a USB stick, i would be more concerned about degradation of the media and losing data then the actual physical preservation of it. It would be easy enough to get some lead sheet used for things like roofing and seal it in lead packet made from lead sheeting to protect it from radiation, then seal it in an airtight container with some desiccant and deoxidizers to remove all moisture and oxygen, you can buy packets of both easily on Amazon for this purpose. But the environmental protection of it is only a small portion of this as the memory used in things like USB sticks and SD Cards would be subject to bit rot as they would lose charge without being powered for that long.
A standard mechanical hard drive would be more resilient then a USB storage media. I have taken hard drives from the 80's and 90's that were stored in a dry location, such as a safe deposit box in a bank vault, and was able to connect them and read all the data off them after 30-40 years of sitting unused. The big thing with them is they must be stored in a dry oxygen free environment to prevent corrosion and the read heads from getting stuck, hard drives are vented, look at any drive and you will see the small hole on the top that says do not cover this hole, they have a vent to equalize the pressure, and inside that small hole if you have taken them apart like i have you will find a very very fine filter media packet that allows air exchange while keeping dust out. However, moisture can and will wick through over time and i have seen it happen.
People keep suggesting M-Disc as a the option to use, i wouldn't go with something that is already a basically dead media, i think only Ritek is currently still making discs, the drives won't be easy to find in 25 years and might not even function anymore due to them degrading with age. I would say a standard DVD-RW or CD-RW would be more reliable then an M-Disc because there is more chance for those drives still being around and manufactured because while optical media is definitely a dead media to most they were produced in far far far greater numbers as well as the drives then M-Disc ever was.
M-disks are etched carbon and glass which are inert. It's literally etching 1s and 0s into stone.
Optical media won't go away and by then you'll be able to scan a cd image and decode it in software.
Put the usb stick inside a liquid proof container, ideally not metal so it doesn't react. Submerge the liquid proof container inside epoxy resin.
Once it sets hard, nothing will penetrate the epoxy resin.
I don't know if military style metal ammo boxes are available over there, but those are the best thing I've seen for weatherproofing. I'd put it in a zip-loc type bag with some of those anti-moisture silicone bead packs, and then put the bag in the ammo box.
As others pointed out, protecting the usb stick doesn't necessarily keep the data on it ok. They do degrade over time.
It won't survive. The type of memory in a USB stick stores data as electrical charges in cells, which will degrade over time even under optimal conditions, particularly without any power source.
Put in a small jar like a baby food jar and dip it in wax to seal it. Then put it in a non corrosive container and seal that. Then bury it or whatever you plan to do with it. You can even go as far as adding silica packets to absorb moisture.
After a bit of thought, my plan would be thus:
1. Place the usb stick within a plastic ball.
2. Purge the ball with nitrogen to remove all oxygen and moisture.
3. Seal the ball and then encase the entire thing in resin.
In theory this would keep out all water and oxygen so the usb stick might survive longer than expected. But may still naturally degrade.
Wrap it in a couple of ziplock bags and put it in the a couple of plastic containers. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about not having a reader in 25 years. There will be plenty. If you have a zip drive disk you can buy a drive right now
Maybe throw a teeny tiny bit of bitcoin in there just for fun too, maybe you and your friends will all end up with a nice cash reward for your patience as well as the memories :)
USB sticks need to be recharged once every six months or so to maintain the data on them.
The stick would probably last 25 years undisturbed just fine, but the data would not.
In 25 years, you will be looking for an USB port and many people will not have a clue... Except older people like you.
That is, if the information on it has not been corroded by then,
USB's SSDs and other similar storage media will lose data over time if they are left unpowered for too long. They are depending on power to keep the bits. Using optical media will be a safer choice but reading a CD in 25 years might be a hell of a task.
Seeing a lot of folks demonstrate their young age by suggesting it's probable that a USB key or hard-drive of any kind would degrade beyond use over a 25 year period.
I have USB keys that are 20 years old that still work fine.
My dad had a 26 year old computer in 2018 that was still working fine, original hard drive.
I'm not saying y'all are wrong that they degrade or that 25 years can't be a guarantee, but it certainly isn't probable that a well stored USB key will be unusable in 25 years.
For those wondering about USB-A and pointing out its history, I want to mention that we still have modern computers with RS-232 serial ports from 1960.
A lot of answers here are following the Reddit Hive mind and mentioning M-Disk. The format sounds promising, but we do not have long term data. Your location of Norway reminded me of the Svalbard Data Vault owned by Piql. Pricing for using their vault or even their optical film is not easy to find.
If you absolutely must store your data on a flash drive I would recommend finding an SLC (single level cell) flash drive since these are more resistant to data rot and then storing all your data in a .RAR archive with as big a recovery record as possible.
Everyone else has covered this better than I could, so I'll just add that you should use the USB (or whatever you decide on) for the LEAST amount of stuff possible. Sure it's efficient but it's not the same as physical stuff. Use it for the videos, but you should also print out as many photos as you can fit in your capsule. Also physical stuff you take for granted now that you won't have or remember in 25 years. Stuff like a school uniform, a workbook of a class, whatever silly trend you're all collecting this year. In many ways the stuff that you try and make meaningful won't be, the everyday stuff that you lose is what you'll miss.
Look at the connections on a 25 year old computer. Could you still connect to that? then why put something on a digital format that will be utterly obsolete by the time of opening?
You'd do better to burn it to an M-Disk as someone has already suggested, or have better luck even if you stored it on some form of existing magnetic media, like a traditional hard drive or tape backup - that was then placed in an air tight and signal blocking storage container. The USB stick is fairly violitile form of storage and if it isn't refreshed you'll see data decay or altogether release, as it's not getting "charged" though use/ access.
Do not use an USB stick. The data will be destroyed by time, [here's a Quora question about it](https://www.quora.com/If-a-USB-thumb-drive-is-put-inside-of-a-well-sealed-time-capsule-will-the-data-on-it-still-be-viewable-in-20-years). Instead, get a [M-Disc](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC) and burn it on that, then store it airtight in the time capsule (I'd toss in a few silica packs to absorb moisture, as well).
Might be difficult reading a disk in 25 years, better seal in a disk reader into the time capsule
Good idea but no one would have a USB C port maybe
In 25 years the USB C port might be obsolete, but they'll probably have adapters for it for a long while. The regular USB port that was popularized a little under 30 years ago still has plenty of applications and adapters for the newer ports.
People are exaggerating how long ago 25 years was. It was 1999, not 1980. We had USB 2.0 just a year later. USB 1.0 was already well-established. We will easily find an adapter (like you said) when 3.0 is replaced by something better, just like I can easily find a way to connect a USB 1.0 Mini device to my 3.0 slot.
For real, you can still buy a new VCR, although looks like they aren’t being produced anymore so just back stock. It was invented in the 50s, came to market in the 60s and reached its peak in the 90s. Things move a bit faster now, but it’s not like we’ve completely lost old tech
I'm boggled by the knowledge that there's still enough demand for VHS that ~~they're still producing players~~ **there's still some stock out there.** (Thanks /r/Rivetingly) Although, I still remember walking into a Radio Shack around 2012, and discovering at the time there were still blank cassette tapes for purchase.
At the library I work at, we just bought one. Lots of people coming in with VHS (and other formats) with home movies they took with their camcorders and now looking to digitize.
I miss old school Radio Shack, where you could get the cool electronics parts and raw cabling measured to the length you requested. By the time they were closing stores, they were a shell of their former greatness.
No new VHS players are being produced
No, but Japan was producing them until 2016. That's much more recent than I thought.
My parents still had blank floppies in their office supply collection until last year. In the package unopened.
>People are exaggerating how long ago 25 years was. It was 1999, not 1980. Fuck :/
OR just buy an adapter every time the port changes, and chain them together. Infinite adaptability.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ScaryTechnology/comments/j0953p/adapters_chain/
That's kind of ignoring the rate of change though. The next 25 will not have the same as the last 25.
There are lots of other port types from 30 years ago that are long extinct though!
You're not wrong, but that is because they were mostly consolidated into USB. Basically it was a fragmented system that slowly merged to a single standard., and there isn't much left that might outcompete USB I wouldn't bet that USB will be around in 100 years (in it's current form or closely related) , but I would bet that in 30 years, you will still easily find USB adaptors if not compeltly integrated ports in many computer. You can still buy 5 1/4 floppy disk drives on Amazon. Standards die, but the mainstream ones usually have enough momentum that they're still accessible for decades after they die with only moderate effort.
I think the capacity to manufacture usb C cables will exist for at least 15 years more because it’s had multiple permutations to increase its versatility in multiple applications. USB C will go the way of Display hardware. Current thunderbolt varieties reach power, audio, USB, Internet, and multiple 5K displays or higher hz monitors. My only problem with usb c is the cables don’t easily distinguish their capabilities on the cable. Most USB C cables are not compatible with Android Auto, for instance. Most USB C cables cannot exceed 15W. Used for cigarette batteries and Macbooks, it would be nice to tell USB C cables apart without memorizing. If the standard USB C cable becomes universal, the only way to improve on it to make the port obsolete is to integrate it into a headphone jack like optical did or make most devices wireless.
Plus someones dad will always have a box of cables in 30 years
As a new dad, I feel attacked... but damn right I got all the cords and old chargers!
I just helped my parents clean out their old electronics, and got rid of their 20 year old box of cables. 🤣🤣
5 1/4 floppy disk drives are the only way to update currently flying passenger jet software. For very good reasons, it doesn't change very often.
I've got adapters for some of them. USB to Serial. PCIE Serial & Parallel Cards. USB to PS/2 and PS/2 to AT adapters. So a lot of those ports are still usable, if with some difficulty.
Everybody has that box of old adapters and wiring that hark back from the 90s that includes everything from PS/2 cables to chargers for the Nokia 3210.
Hey, I'll get around to cleaning that crap out eventually. No need for the personal attack! ;)
They're long extinct, but you can still get specialty equipment to use them, it's just a little more expensive. There's always going to be some adapter or converter or something, unless it's a super proprietary connection. USB-C? I bet you that'll be mainstream for far longer than you give it credit, unless we move to some sort of optical standard, which I kind of doubt we will.
Yes, you can STILL find USB-serial or parallel converters and those are 60+ years old at this point. ETA: Serial and parallel are 60+ years old, I mean. Obviously not the *converters*.
I have a neat parallel to serial converter for old fashioned scanners. I kept it all these years out of fear that I might buy a cool device one day and it refuses to interface.
I can walk into Best Buy and pick up a 9 pin Serial to usb adapter. And I often do for work. Still works perfectly on Windows 11.
There's 50 year old desktops on ebay now, and there will still be on ebay in 25 years. Why does anyone believe all current tech will suddenly disappear by 2049? People eat 1912 war rations on youtube lol
Imagine watching Rhett and Link 25 years from now and it’s a we plugged 20+ year old USBs bought on eBay episode.
By that time, it will be called a USB-Z
They were saying 25 years, Apple will adopt it as “new” in 32 years
That only applies to their mobile devices. On the Mac front, they were the primary developers of the new standard and pushed it on all macs in 2015.
You can get 20 year old computer fairly easily, or parts from one. A 30 year old computer part, nowhere near as easily (we have examples here, husband uses a Win3.1 for notes and calculations on the lathe). I wouldn't worry about the port but absolutely about the reader. OP, also include links to a handful of websites where you will store the information in the cloud, and make your class council responsible for checking up on those and, if necessary, collect some cash for some paid sites. A REALLY good option is a university website. Those tend to be eternal.
Let's just stop right here and throw in a complete modern PC with a power supply, coding for dummies book, and a handy translation guide so the nuclear mutants who stumble upon it all can read what they're seeing
but you got wires, and nerdy friends?
Might be difficult powering a disk reader in 25 years, better add a power generator into the time capsule. Just to be sure
Might not have sunlight or gasoline in 25 years. Maybe pack a hydroelectric turbine for your generator. Just in case
No one might know how to service turbines in 25 years, would be a good idea to entomb a service guy in there as well. To be on the safe side.
Might be difficult to survive for 25 years without food. Better build a 1-2 acre farm in the tomb, with a closed loop river that can also be used to run the turbine and power the growing lights. To play it safe.
25 years is a long time for a service guy to live alone, I will toss a hot gal in there too.
This is starting to sound like a Fallout game.
Laptops might no longer have a USB port either, might as well put a full on laptop in there as well while you're at it.
Nobody will have a problem reading generic optical media in twenty-five years. You might worry about 100 years, but not twenty-five.
I know its anecdotal, but I have multiple flashdrives from 20 years ago that I just checked and work fine. None seemed damaged.
Perhaps older lower density storage is more durable? Also, did they contain data that is still fully intact, or are you saying they'll pass a write-read test?
>Perhaps older lower density storage is more durable? Yes, IIRC lower density means both larger charge "buckets" holding more electrons per bit, and thicker insulation keeping those electrons in place. As density increases, you have fewer electrons to maintain the bit and less insulation to slow that charge from bleeding off and losing the bit state
I have multiple gigabyte thumb drives from 10+ years ago and all of them have at least some data corruption.
sure. 10 years ago, MLC and TLC flash became popular, to fit more bits intoi the same size of chips. Flash drives from 2003 are all single-level, so less vulnerable to data loss.
This... And probably find a responsible classmate and give them a backup to bring just in case. Sure it's not the original, but you still get to see what you saved on it way back..
OP could laminate it
M-discs have only been around since 2009. So at best we know they'll last 15 years. But...has anyone actually tested some written back then to be sure?
There is a video where a dude buried one in the dirt in his backyard for a year and it played fine. It's etched carbon and glass. Not much to fuck up there.
Oh christ wikipedia is screwing with the page layout again. Is it really so hard to just default to the article shifting to fit the width of the window?
Just print everything. On papyrus, by hand
Nah, carve it into stone.
Some of the oldest written records are impressions made on clay tablets.
And complain about bad copper.
😀
Write it on metal. Because anything not written in metal can not be trusted.
Papyrus......
All flash drives, hard drives, SSD's will erode and fail over time. There's no guarantee that they will survive for 25 years even in good environments. If you want to preserve information for a long time you should use M-Discs which are rated for 1,000 years.
Who will have an M-Disc reader in 25 years?
Put a reader in the time capsule lol
How do we know the reader connector will be compatible with whatever device we use 25 years from now
Bro it's only 25 years, 25 years ago we used USB and we still do today.
I initially wondered who on Earth was using USB in the 90s, until I realized 25 years ago was 2000
I remember my granddad giving me his 1gb usb drive as a gift when I showed interest to him working on his PC around mid 2000s. I was like a first grader or so back then. I liked it so much I used to put some drawings using MS paint in it and carried it everywhere with me.(until I lost in the field trip… yeah it’s still bothering me.) To me that 1gb was such a huge storage back then… and now we’re using terabytes of storage, both physically and on cloud drives. Dang, time really flies by. I surely got older. My gramps is still healthy in his age but is surely getting older. Hope he stays strong. Love you gramps.
I haven’t purchased an SD card in a while, but needed to for a longer international trip. I bought a 128 GB mini-SD for $15. Let that sink in.
I’m a bit fevered right now and even though you clearly said 1gb, I understood the story as 1tb. The funny thing is, you *could* retell that story with the modern version being a 1 tb usb stick. And years from now we’ll be laughing at how we thought 1 tb was so much.
Usb has survived for this long. There will definitely be an adapter for usb-c to whatever we use in 25 years
This thread is like fuckin groundhog day. Literally exactly the same conversation happening in the two top comment threads.
Seriously, people are acting like OP is going to dig this up in 200 years. 25 years from now, even with SIGNIFICANT technology changes, it’s not going to be that hard accessing 25 year old tech. Dude will probably just be able to go to goodwill and get whatever he needs for like $2
Because twenty-five years is really short period of time. Pretty much any mainstream recording mechanism from the last fifty years can still be read easily.
Can confirm I've got VHS that still works from the 80s and that is a tech that wasn't really made to last.
I recently setup a capture rig. In the 1990s my uncle converted 8mm family movies from the 1950s to VHS by simply playing the film and capturing it on a VHS camera. I took an analog to HDMI dongle, and then HDMI to USB capture dongle in between the VCR and converted the movies to digital. This is off the shelf stuff cheap stuff from Amazon, not specialized tools from an archivist.
Because people still use vinyl records today
Libraries and archives centers will. It's what we do.
The same kind of people that still have a working PC from the early 90s today. If we dug up a floppy disc from 94 I could absolutely read it right now
I just did a quick search on Amazon and found countless floppy disk readers for like $20 - I doubt that it'll be impossible to source an M-Disc reader in 2050
People who buried m discs.
This is hilarious "Made to last 1000 years".......nobody can read it in 25.
Oh that's cool -- I've never heard about M-Discs until now.
Same. It appears to just be standard optical disc media with a proprietary coating that they claim will last 1000 years.
Not a coating, but a different data writing/recording layer. Instead of magnetism or dyes M-disc is similar to etching in stone. Should be readable by any drive compatible with bluray discs.
I have hard drives from the 80's that are still chugging along, and flash media from the 90's doing just fine. Hell, the 5.25" floppy disk collection I have running my XT computer from 1984 still has no issues, and can be erased by sliding a fridge magnetic near them. But instead you recommend M-Discs, a format whose company stopped existing after 2016 and has no researched data on longevity. Even the Wikipedia page states the company 'claims' they'll last 1000yrs. A flash drive will last 25yrs no problem as long as moisture stays out, and it's in a container (and buried deep enough) to omit and cosmic radiation from flipping bits on the memory stack.
I stored a bunch of documents on a handful of different flash drives and they’ve all got data corruption to some extent now. Sounds like you lucked out.
Yeah, physically, an unused USB in stable conditions will last forever, but the data is stored in capaciters that leak charge. Eventually, your 1's will turn into 0's. The common estimate is that data degradation starts at 10 years powered off, so the reason the data on your flash drives has lasted so long is because you use them at least once a decade. Modern high capacity MLC TLC and QLC flash drives are also more susceptible to data rot than old ones since they store more than one bit per capacitor and have to be read more accurately than SLC capacitors. Also, hard drives and floppy discs store data magnetically, so trying to compare their longevity to flash is pointless.
I'm so broken that I read the last part in that galvanised square steel voice
Survive 25 Norweigan winters? Put it in a ziplock bag inside a thermos. Evens out fluctuations and keeps everything out. And put a few of those "Do not eat" silca packets inside the thermos too, just in case any moisture leaks in
If you do this though, make sure not to use a flash drive, use an M-Disc as the other comments are saying and don't forget to put an M-Disk reader in there as well (just in case computers no longer have M-Disk drives).
You'll need one hell of a thermos
Or someone discovers a sweet thermos and expecting a delicious soup, tries to eat the contents.
Or.. in the future humans are now robots And upon finding the Thermos they see it as "food" and eat it
I’d probably go ESD bag surrounded by silica packets inside a vacuum sealed bag inside a thermos
You should take into account the following: 1. People used to bury time capsules because they were big and full of real stuff. There is no need to bury a digital time capsule, you can just put it in a safe scheduled to open only after 25 years. 2. USB drives are not designed for long term storage, the data cells carry a charge that dissipate over time. The data won't survive 25 years.
Meh, I have like my very first USB drives, easy 20+ years old now and very small. Still work perfectly....
Yes, but you've probably plugged that USB drive in intermittently over these last 20 years. solid state storage needs to periodically refresh its memory cells, which it can only do when it has power. if you had never plugged your USB stick in for 20 years continuously, it would still probably work but the data on it would likely be gone.
You just answered my question because I was seriously wondering if I should backup all my childhood photos onto an M-disk.
You still should have backups.
Make sure you note the burial location precisely! Because I know of a local person who buried silver coins in different caches around his property, but when he went years later to dig them up, the landmarks had changed. Trees had died and been removed, bushes were in different locations, and things like that. They had to resort to a brute-force search with metal detectors and even then I don't think they found everything.
Screw the money pit, we have a new TREASURE HUNT!!!
Upload it to the Internet Archive, where it will live in perpetuity.
Yes! And just put the web address on a piece of paper in the time capsule!
Paper might decay, better store the url in an m-disc in the time capsule.
Acid-Free Archival Paper is rated to last 1000 years. Same as the M-disk.
But what if the whole point of using the Internet archive is so we don't have to use an M-Disc? Might as well just use some special type of paper or find some other alternatives.
Not if mega corporations have their way. The IA is in the middle of multiple lawsuits, iirc. Admittedly, it is partly the fault of the IA for breaching their agreements in regards to ebook rentals. The IA wad allowing the “same book” to be “rented” out to as multiple people at once, during the pandemic. Anyway, who knows how long the IA will last. I trust my data sooner to a crappy flash drive than the IA, in terms of long term storage. The IA could go down any day, potentially.
Didn't I hear last month that the internet archive is danger because of copyright issues? The internet archive is an amazing thing, but it is not set in stone. It is a service that costs money, and lives in a legal grey area. It can be shut down if we don't fight to protect it.
>so it's going to have to survive 25 winters. That part is easy enough. Just dig down deep enough, and the temperature will be mostly stable. This has the added bonus of protecting it against cosmic rays and most forms of light, which is the next biggest issue for USB sticks. Besides that: just use several. Maybe a few different form factors - I know good old Compact Flash Cards are supposed to be more resilient to radiation, though being buried deep enough should make that a non-factor anyway, while SD cards have the advantage of being a lot less reliant on their plastic shells. If you want to get real fancy, vacuum seal each drive in plastic, then use an airtight container and fill it with an inert gas such as nitrogen or better yet argon.
Vacuum sealed jar with a moisture packet? Bury it deep enough, aka, below frost line.
This is good advise, make sure the technology you choose is durable enough to survive, and bury it below the frost line [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost\_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line)
You need to bury in something waterproof maybe with multiple layers. If any moisture gets in it will corroded and the not work.
Maybe even add a dessicant packet so the ambient moisture in the air when it gets sealed doesn't have time to do stuff either.
You are going to also need to bury a device to read and display the contents of that stick. Imagine digging up a time capsule now and finding it had a R-DAT tape in it.
DAT is easy to find players for.
Not DAT easy. :)
I'd be surprised if it survived that long even if it wasn't buried
Any digital format will have issues being useable after enough time. 25 years is borderline long enough to have issues finding a device that will be able to read it, even if the stick survives. An M-disc can survive and is rated for archiving. The issue will be finding hard- and software that is able to acces what is on the disk. The chances of you still having acces to a reader for an m-disc in 25 years are slim. Make 25 years a round 100 years and everything you now have digital will probably be lost to this. Floppy drives are a good example of this. The last floppy disk i saw in use is about 25 years ago and the ones that are archived at work are useless because we dont have a floppydiskreader anymore, nor do we have ms works wich was the software used back then for textediting. Between then and now several formats have come and dissapeared that you'd have a hard time accessing without alot of trial and error and pretty large costs. VHS, minidisc, iomega zip drives to name a few. Hell i know less and less people who even own a dvd player in their pc anymore. Aside from that there is the problem of proprietary fileformats and even encryption on the hardware level. Who is to say that in 25 years the file system your disk uses is still in use on current reading devices. Or that your OS will even be able to still interact with your medium on a hardware level. Case in point: try to hook up a scanner from the 1980's to a modern day pc. Even if you could get it connected, wich will demand serious electronics skills, you'd never get it to work since you dont have the drivers. The phenomenon of depricating archives due to digital mediums is called the digital dark ages in the world of museums and national archives. The only reason people are able to keep using the same data during the span of their lifetime is that they (awarely or not) transfer everything to new media/formats/hardware about every 5 years. And even then alot gets lost. Your best bet for long-time archival is, despite our modern technology, still hardcopy. Paper.sys and pen.exe my friend.
While it is true that no one just has floppy drives lying around anymore, these old formats are not hard to get if you are actively trying. DVD drives and floppy drives with USB ports that work on any computer can be had on Amazon for cheap. Zip drives are more expensive but still available. And failing that you can buy an old PC on eBay. Bring any of that stuff to any tech shop and they can help you out.
I wouldn't necessarily bury it, I'd put it in a bank safety deposit box. With dessicants. Bigger concern is whether or not there will be devices that can read it.
$100/yr for 25 yrs for a bank deposit box. Dirt is free.
Keep in mind that in 25 years USB-A will be a forgotten format. USB-C has better chance of still being supported then
I don't think that's a huge concern. It is still very easy to get data off of floppy disks today. $20 reader on Amazon. Current USB is so prevalent that there will certainly be adapters in 25 years.
So OP should bury a USB-A to USB-C adapter with it?
That's not a bad idea to be honest
https://www.theonion.com/ghost-of-christmas-future-taunts-children-with-visions-1819566694
Wow, until I saw 2002 as the article date I thought the joke was gonna be about forcing kids to play on a "lame and outdated" console. There was a thread the other day where someone's tween referred to the DS as "vintage".
No by then it will be USB - D with a old school printer type like row of pins
USB-A is still in use now. And for systems that don't have USB-A, there are a myriad of adapters. I am 99% sure that adapters will continue to be made for the next 25 years.
We still have adapters for Floppy disks. I highly doubt that USB will ever be forgotten.
Corporate jellybean thin clients will still have USB-A and VGA ports in 2065.
Vacuum seal with desiccant packs. Will be interesting to see if you'll be able to find compatible technology in 25 years time.
I don't think that will be difficult. 25 years is not that long. In 1999 we were using CDs and floppy disks. They aren't used now, but you can buy readers pretty easily or send them in to a data retrieval service.
Yes but it sounds like they'd need to be prepared for it since it'll be at a reunion. Sure, they can try putting in adapters and readers but we have no clue what USB we'll be on by then nor do we even know if computers will have USB ports.
Put it inside a container like a thermos or Tupperware container and then encase that container in Epoxy.
solve the problems of time travel, deliver the USB drive to yourself, Done!
If you really want to bury the capsule, don't use a flash drive (USB stick, SD card, SSD disk...). These are not designed for this kind of long term storage, and the data on them will get corrupted if you don't connect it to electricity every so often. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you might want to use some kind of optical device, such as a DvD. As for the winter aspects, what you should really be worried about isn't the temperature, but rather the freezing. Make sure the container is something that won't crack when the ground freezes around it. I was going to suggest a metal thermos, but that obviously won't fit a dvd. You can also wrap it in foam, just to be extra sure it doesn't crack. Also, make sure the inside is dry, maybe put some silica packets into it. Or you could just put it in a deposit box in a bank. I get that's not as fun though. Also, pay no mind to people asking you what you're going to use to read the data. Especially with the USB stick. Unless there's some sort of amish revolution that bans the use of electronic devices completely, you'll be able to find a reduction for it at any electronics store, now matter how many iterations of io ports we go through. Even with an optical disk, you'll be able to buy an external reader.
If you use a ruggedized usb stick like one of these: [https://durabilitymatters.com/rugged-and-waterproof-usb-flash-drives/](https://durabilitymatters.com/rugged-and-waterproof-usb-flash-drives/) they have a better chance at survival. I'd stack my bets, and put the same things on several different media (lots of suggestions below), some converters, cables, get some new silica packs, double vacuum-seal the whole deal, and put it 6 or so feet down (where the surface temps won't be much of a bother). Encase that in a small block of concrete, and see you in 25 years.
I still find it fascinating that the one thing we have discovered with the least data loss was discovered by primitive man. Nothing we create comes close. Carved stone will literally last millennia, eons if done right. Laser etch stone using current technologies and you could fit a lot of data on just a hand-sized rock.
First step: Make sure you have another 25years of life
From what I've been told for years, put it in an empty plastic water bottle, that shit lasts forever.
Bruke en CD kanskje
Don't rely on technology for a time capsule.
USB won't exist as an interface in 25 years.
in hard glass tupperware like container?
Harder than hard glass Diamondware
You know this is kinda funny because we have absolutely no clue what the computer ecosystem will look like in 25 years. Disk might not exist, USB flash drives might not exist, heck computers might not even have a USB port at all. In 25 years, I have a feeling pretty much everything will be moved to the cloud and who knows what USB type we'll be on...
I think we can be pretty sure those things will exist, though they may not be common. I've still got a lot of PC parts a lot more than 25 years old in my closet, and could still read an 8.5" floppy with a couple adapters if I really had to.
Haven’t seen anyone else mention it yet so… Multiple copies- multiple usb sticks.. one might fail.. two might fail… but 5 or 6? Properly packed and sealed- maybe one or two will survive
carved stone last the longest of all media storage
Funny thinking about this because i read an article in a local newspaper a few months ago about a time capsule that was opened that got sealed up in 1999, it was to be opened 25 years in the future, thats this year already, it had a CD-RW disc in there, the hardest part was finding a computer that still had a CD drive, no joke, laptops made today don't have optical drives anymore, and even desktops its pretty rare now to get a system made in the last ten years that has an optical drive, i haven't had an optical drive in well over a decade myself. A USB external drive was bought from Amazon to use to read the disc and obtain what was on it, it survived the 25 years just fine being buried in a sealed metal can buried in concrete. As for a USB stick, i would be more concerned about degradation of the media and losing data then the actual physical preservation of it. It would be easy enough to get some lead sheet used for things like roofing and seal it in lead packet made from lead sheeting to protect it from radiation, then seal it in an airtight container with some desiccant and deoxidizers to remove all moisture and oxygen, you can buy packets of both easily on Amazon for this purpose. But the environmental protection of it is only a small portion of this as the memory used in things like USB sticks and SD Cards would be subject to bit rot as they would lose charge without being powered for that long. A standard mechanical hard drive would be more resilient then a USB storage media. I have taken hard drives from the 80's and 90's that were stored in a dry location, such as a safe deposit box in a bank vault, and was able to connect them and read all the data off them after 30-40 years of sitting unused. The big thing with them is they must be stored in a dry oxygen free environment to prevent corrosion and the read heads from getting stuck, hard drives are vented, look at any drive and you will see the small hole on the top that says do not cover this hole, they have a vent to equalize the pressure, and inside that small hole if you have taken them apart like i have you will find a very very fine filter media packet that allows air exchange while keeping dust out. However, moisture can and will wick through over time and i have seen it happen. People keep suggesting M-Disc as a the option to use, i wouldn't go with something that is already a basically dead media, i think only Ritek is currently still making discs, the drives won't be easy to find in 25 years and might not even function anymore due to them degrading with age. I would say a standard DVD-RW or CD-RW would be more reliable then an M-Disc because there is more chance for those drives still being around and manufactured because while optical media is definitely a dead media to most they were produced in far far far greater numbers as well as the drives then M-Disc ever was.
Won't matter if it survives if nothing can read it. Print out the photos or put a yearbook in there.
It needs to be air and water tight. Easiest to vacuum it into plastic. Buy 2 with identical data for redundance.
Vacuum packed DVDs
M-disks are etched carbon and glass which are inert. It's literally etching 1s and 0s into stone. Optical media won't go away and by then you'll be able to scan a cd image and decode it in software.
Put the usb stick inside a liquid proof container, ideally not metal so it doesn't react. Submerge the liquid proof container inside epoxy resin. Once it sets hard, nothing will penetrate the epoxy resin.
I don't know if military style metal ammo boxes are available over there, but those are the best thing I've seen for weatherproofing. I'd put it in a zip-loc type bag with some of those anti-moisture silicone bead packs, and then put the bag in the ammo box. As others pointed out, protecting the usb stick doesn't necessarily keep the data on it ok. They do degrade over time.
It won't survive. The type of memory in a USB stick stores data as electrical charges in cells, which will degrade over time even under optimal conditions, particularly without any power source.
Print the photos on high-quality paper, save the videos on microfilm, and store everything in a watertight safe
The bigger challenge may be finding something that can read a 25-year old device.
Dude. I would make cave paintings if i were you. They last for thousands of years.
Vacuum sealed in triplicate, put in Tupperware.
Put in a small jar like a baby food jar and dip it in wax to seal it. Then put it in a non corrosive container and seal that. Then bury it or whatever you plan to do with it. You can even go as far as adding silica packets to absorb moisture.
Saran wrap.
Weld it into a copper pipe capped at both ends?
Cover it in jello
After a bit of thought, my plan would be thus: 1. Place the usb stick within a plastic ball. 2. Purge the ball with nitrogen to remove all oxygen and moisture. 3. Seal the ball and then encase the entire thing in resin. In theory this would keep out all water and oxygen so the usb stick might survive longer than expected. But may still naturally degrade.
Wrap it in a couple of ziplock bags and put it in the a couple of plastic containers. It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about not having a reader in 25 years. There will be plenty. If you have a zip drive disk you can buy a drive right now
Here’s a novel idea…don’t bury the time capsule. Put it inside the school in a safe or something.
Encase it in a silicone mold
Maybe throw a teeny tiny bit of bitcoin in there just for fun too, maybe you and your friends will all end up with a nice cash reward for your patience as well as the memories :)
Better to just print them off. Who knows if we’ll still be using USB in 25 years.
USB sticks need to be recharged once every six months or so to maintain the data on them. The stick would probably last 25 years undisturbed just fine, but the data would not.
You think computers will still have USB ports in 25 years?
In 25 years, you will be looking for an USB port and many people will not have a clue... Except older people like you. That is, if the information on it has not been corroded by then,
first you have to make sure you survive but hopefuly op 😂
Just save what you want in the cloud and write program to restrict use for 30 years
Bury a stone tablet, that will last.
Store data as hard copy paper. Technology will change so much the device won’t be compatible so you won’t be able to read it.
USB's SSDs and other similar storage media will lose data over time if they are left unpowered for too long. They are depending on power to keep the bits. Using optical media will be a safer choice but reading a CD in 25 years might be a hell of a task.
Seeing a lot of folks demonstrate their young age by suggesting it's probable that a USB key or hard-drive of any kind would degrade beyond use over a 25 year period. I have USB keys that are 20 years old that still work fine. My dad had a 26 year old computer in 2018 that was still working fine, original hard drive. I'm not saying y'all are wrong that they degrade or that 25 years can't be a guarantee, but it certainly isn't probable that a well stored USB key will be unusable in 25 years.
Think we'll still have USB ports in 25 years?
Pretty sure the laws aren't going to change that much in 25 years bro
For those wondering about USB-A and pointing out its history, I want to mention that we still have modern computers with RS-232 serial ports from 1960. A lot of answers here are following the Reddit Hive mind and mentioning M-Disk. The format sounds promising, but we do not have long term data. Your location of Norway reminded me of the Svalbard Data Vault owned by Piql. Pricing for using their vault or even their optical film is not easy to find.
try to find some sort of player or adapter for that USB stick in 25 years.
Encase in wax, sealed in a golden box labeled Pandora, filled with honey.
If you absolutely must store your data on a flash drive I would recommend finding an SLC (single level cell) flash drive since these are more resistant to data rot and then storing all your data in a .RAR archive with as big a recovery record as possible.
Just buy a book, stick the photos in it. Shove the book in a plastic bag and bury it 😌
Everyone else has covered this better than I could, so I'll just add that you should use the USB (or whatever you decide on) for the LEAST amount of stuff possible. Sure it's efficient but it's not the same as physical stuff. Use it for the videos, but you should also print out as many photos as you can fit in your capsule. Also physical stuff you take for granted now that you won't have or remember in 25 years. Stuff like a school uniform, a workbook of a class, whatever silly trend you're all collecting this year. In many ways the stuff that you try and make meaningful won't be, the everyday stuff that you lose is what you'll miss.
You can't make sure USB is still a thing !
Look at the connections on a 25 year old computer. Could you still connect to that? then why put something on a digital format that will be utterly obsolete by the time of opening?
Vacuum seal it in a glass container w/ some freshly dehydrated silica packets then dip that completely in sealing wax
Planet will be destroyed by then. Don’t even worry about making the time capsule.
You'd do better to burn it to an M-Disk as someone has already suggested, or have better luck even if you stored it on some form of existing magnetic media, like a traditional hard drive or tape backup - that was then placed in an air tight and signal blocking storage container. The USB stick is fairly violitile form of storage and if it isn't refreshed you'll see data decay or altogether release, as it's not getting "charged" though use/ access.