That was a lot more difficult before BIP39 seed phrases were invented. You could of course write down anything, but there would've been a lot of room for error.

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Spinning hard drives last for decades. You can pretty absolutely protect yourself by storing two with multiple copies of the key each

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They are succeptible to magnetic degradation, its why you go to open a jpeg from 8 years ago and some are suddenly corrupt. You have to leave them in a RAID setup with sonething self healing like ZFS. They are way more reliable than cold storage SSD ( which can start bitrot in as little as a month) but for cold storage magnetic tape is better

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tape is just as susceptible to magnets, though it is a more stable medium. It's not like they'll be exposed to significant magnetic fields though

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Its not just significant magnetic field ( apparently we do have geo magnetic storms that corrupt data) it is that assigning the 1 /0 bit is not permanent. The 1 or 0 you store fades with time as it wants to lose its assigned magnetism. You might be fine for 10 years, or you might lose a critical bit corrupting a file. it is why archival experts suggest if it is critical data stored offline you need to store on two or more different mediums, because "1 copy is not a backup". Anyway, we are getting deep in the weeds of data entropy and recovery and I think your original comment was meant as being helpful to the lay-person...whom may not actually care to much if they lose a file or two, unless it is a crypto wallet key--i would trust those M series BluRay archival format since the laser alters the disk, but printing out on paper as another copy

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I must have been lucky with my 286's 20MB hdd

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You definitly have been. I have not been so lucky. Lost various data on 10-15 year old drives ( stored in climate controlled basement ) , nothing critical, but enough to prompt me to do regular full copy off and back on process as a refresh

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I probably should take another image of the 286 and diff it against the earlier backup

And if I time travel, I'll put the key on a hard drive, tape, DVD, and archive quality dvd