Maybe the memory chips will retain their bits for 100 years, but what about the driver hardware or internal power supply? Anyone had an electrolytic capacitor last for 100 years? Just sayin...

I like the image of the USB sticks in the -80 freezer, though. :)
_______________________________________
Roger S. Rowlett
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Colgate University
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On 12/12/2012 4:38 PM, Artem Evdokimov wrote:

Or... (gasp) store a regular USB drive in a freezer, yes? If the relationship between data decay rate and temperature indeed follows the same good old Arrhenius formula then any old USB drive is virtually endless at -80C and safe for human life span at -20 (i.e. kitchen freezer, sans defrost cycles (so pack your USB in some ice packs so defrost doesn't kill it).

 

If this works, feel free to send me money, SanDisk...

 

Artem

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Richard Gillilan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

SanDisk advertises a "Memory Vault" disk for archival storage of photos that they claim will last 100 years.

(note: they do have a scheme for estimating lifetime of the memory, Arrhenius Equation ... interesting. Check it out: www.sandisk.com/products/usb/memory-vault/ and click the Chronolock tab.).

Has anyone here looked into this or seen similar products?

Richard Gillilan
MacCHESS