A colleague of mine has terminal brain cancer and is a single mother of two very young kids. She has recorded a lot of video (4k resolution) and needs a way to preserve that data for her children to watch as they grow up.
I am familiar with a number of online storage options from Amazon's Glacier to Dropbox, and I've even thought about having her use YouTube.
I'm sure there is a small monthly budget that will be available to pay for this, but the solution cannot be too expensive. I would also like for the solution to be easy enough for her kids to access. I'm really hoping to find a service that will be around in the long term - maybe 20 years or so - until her kids are college age and can manage this content on their own.
How should I advise her to pick a service? What options do the HN readers recommend? Is there a service out there that is better suited to type of use case than others?
Thanks in advance.
As I have mentioned on HN before I have been working in video and image data quite a bit over the last few years and, frankly, that's a LONG time. We usually think 18 to 36 months out. 20 years, now that's a problem. I honestly don't think any of the current solutions that are out there will work in 20 years without numerous iterations of upgrades in the mean time.<p>With that being said, I am quite willing to throw my own personal time and energy into coming up with a long term solution for this family. If you are interested, my contact information is in my profile. Feel free to reach out.
Twenty years is a really long time. In 1995 the choices would have been things like WORM drives, DAT, VHS, Floppies, IDE hard disks, etc.<p>Of those, VHS or Floppy are probably the most likely to be accessible today. And it would be painful. I would suggest multiple backups each in multiple formats. I'd look at .ISO formats in both several hard copy and cloud archives. And more native formats in the cloud.<p>The key is to have a team that is willing and capable of stewarding the material as technology changes and services break down.<p>My best wishes for all affected.