future proof file encryption

[Michel Messerschmidt]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 07:22:56PM -0500, Robert J. Hansen wrote:
> Hard drives tend not to crash or overheat when they're powered down,
> properly mothballed, and put in long-term storage.

Unless your photos are made for your grandchildren only, I don't believe 
in a personal "dead" long-term storage. Most people I know just want to 
keep files that they use at least occasionally.
While I like your proposal for long-term storage, I rather stick with 
harddisks or flash drives for personal data. That way the files remain 
usable while being archived.
But I wouldn't recommend more than two harddrives. With current hardrives
I regard it as sufficient to use just one dedicated backup disk or even 
two copies on different computers. As long as the backups are verified, 
the probability of two simultaneous drive failures is low enough to make 
the risk acceptable. 
And if the house burns down ...the shoebox wasn't fireproof either.

Back to encryption, I see no problem to simply use crypto filesystems 
with this scenario.

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