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?
You could look at fire safe boxes for document storage. Those are usually pretty solid. You would want to bag up the drive inside an anti static bag and probably put a couple of those little water absorbing silicone packets in there as well. If access isn’t an issue then maybe some sealant around the seams to keep it more water tight.
Magnetic tape would be better for long term storage as well I think. Those have longer storage stability. I don’t know how long an unplugged hard drive will reliably store information.
Animals could dig it up but probably wouldn’t as it wouldn’t smell like food. Depth wise I’d go for at least a couple feet deep, the traditional 6 is a surprisingly deep hole and temperature gets more consistent the deeper you go (at least with readily available tools, it eventually starts to get hot again).
Please note totally random opinion with very little experience with long term data storage. Thanks for the fun thought experiment, I hope things get better and you don’t need your backup data.