Keeping a personal archive readable in ten years

Back to list2025-09-16
You

What format survives a decade of neglect?

ChatGPT

Plain text and HTML with no build step, images in formats older than the archive itself. The test is not whether it opens today but whether it opens with no software you have to install first.

You

How do you decide what is worth archiving at all?

ChatGPT

Keep what you cannot recreate and what you would miss. Everything downloadable again is a cache, not an archive, and treating the two the same is what turns 200 GB of real memories into 4 TB of noise.