Home Safe Recommendations

[Carlos Alvarez]

Thanks for proving my point.

Sorry, didn't realize your point was that data is forever if you take reasonable care of it.

On the safe question, last night a friend told me he was picking one up at Tractor Supply. He based that on the price relative to the great reviews. I guess they have a killer sale going on.

[Matt Meiser]

I’m sure the data is fine but good luck finding a way to read the media or open up the file. You are obviously naive to think that couldn’t happen with again.

[Carlos Alvarez]

I have access to all my files from the 80s and 90s. For example, image files all still work just fine. Office Converter and other applications will convert things like word processing files from dead formats. And even without them, you can get the data back out and just lose all the formatting. Etc etc. Going forward from now, we know that today's file formats for the most part will continue to be used "forever" because they are expandable and scalable. It would take work to come up with something from the 2000s at all which won't be supported long term. JPEG will be with us forever, as will open document formats, PDF, and the like. I thought Corel would die and converted all my files, yet here it still is.

Digital is forever. It may take minor effort to back it up and keep it current. Paper is definitely not forever, and the only fix for paper going bad is...digitize it. Making copies just copies the defect.

[Tom M King]

Ours is by Victor Safe & Lock company. It belonged to my Grandfather, and has his name on it. When I picked it up to get into our house with my front end loader rated for 2500 lb., I could barely pick it up, so it weighs about the same thing as a cube of 500 bricks. At first, I thought it was really thick iron, but it turns out most of the weight is from fire clay. The fire clay is about 8 inches thick. It has its own foundation under the floor.