Like I’d imagine there’s gonna be a lot of rain over time if I want this time capsule to last like idk 10 years? 30 years?

Is there like a box so tough its indestructible?

Can animals dig it up if I bury it?

How deep do it bury it?

Is the earth’s magnetism gonna affect the hard drive? (Or is there a better medium?)

Like I want this to be like very low budget, I don’t have millions to build an actual timecapsule like some organizations have done. Is there some cheap box that’s waterproof to protect a hard drive from damage for like 30 years buried in the ground?

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    1 day ago

    Just throwing the 1000 years mark is a kinda of marketing. But the cool thing is there’s actual science behind it.

    The issue with writable optical discs is that the substrate is based on organic materials. These material, usually a cyano group, oxidize over time. You can help slow that down by keeping them out of the sun, prevent heat cycles, etc. But short of storing them in nitrogen they will eventually oxidize. What’s more, CDs have their data layer completely exposed on top, making the problem even more pronounced. DVDs and Blu-ray at least have a layer of plastic on top of the data layer, but that’s obviously still not 100% impermeable to oxygen.

    M-Discs on the other hand use a carbon glass material for the data layer. Something that doesn’t oxidize. Heat cycling night form cracks in it, so yeah I would avoid significant heat/cold cycles if you want them to last, but past that they should be really fucking stable.

    It is 100 years? 500? 999? Maybe, but it’s kind of irrelevant. In optimal storage conditions (which are easily achievable) they should last many lifetimes.

      • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        1 day ago

        Thanks :)

        I think they are kind of neat. Large volume cold storage is a big issue for home gamers/self hosters. Storage, at scale, can be very expensive and so hard to backup. Tapes are great, but incredibly fucking expensive (the tapes no so bad, but the drives are thousands of dollars… Used!) So I really wish high capacity BluRay M-Discs were more prevalent, market at scale would easily drive down the cost of the media, and the drives are/were already cheap. Unfortunately seeing the trajectory optical medias are in right now, that’s very unlikely to happen :(