If you could take it with you, what would you take?

DataPacRat

The Scenario: Our protagonist estimates that present-day cryonics has around a five percent chance of leading to a successful revival. Since that's better than the zero percent chance if he doesn't sign up, and he can afford it, he makes the necessary arrangements. As part of those arrangements, he receives a lockable file-cabinet drawer, in which he can put any desired mementos, knick-knacks, or other objects; and which will be protected as securely as his own cryo-preserved body. The drawer is around one and a half cubic feet: two feet deep, one foot wide, nine inches high.

The Question: What should he arrange to have placed in his drawer?

Some of the more obvious options:

* Long-term archival DVDs, such as M-Discs, containing as much of his personal computer's data as possible. With slimline jewel cases, around 400 such discs would fit, which could hold up to around 1.5 terabytes. (Secondary question: Which data to archive?)
* Objects of sentimental value
* Objects with present-day value: cash, gold coins, jewelry
* Objects with predicted future value: collectibles, small antiques
* In honor of previous seekers of immortality: a copy of the ancient Egyptian funerary text, the Book of Coming Forth By Day (aka the Book of the Dead).
* For the purely practical and/or munchkin approach: a weapon, such as a fighting knife or even a pistol

Long-term archival DVDs, such as M-Discs, containing as much of his personal computer's data as possible. With slimline jewel cases, around 400 such discs would fit, which could hold up to around 1.5 terabytes. (Secondary question: Which data to archive?)

The first rule of backuping up data is that you are not selective; or if you are selective, you use a blacklist (excluding big useless things like swap files) rather than a whitelist (because you will forget to put something on it).

When storing large numbers of optical disks, you use spindles rather than jewel cases; this approximately doubles the density. But I'm not convinced that archival-grade optical disks are better than regular hard disk drives or flash memory, particularly if you spread across a few different types of media and use large par files; in particular, optical disks are very expensive, and you have no guarantee that they will live up to their durability claims.

Not to mention that flash memory has much better storage density. A compromise would be archiving just about everything on flash memory and having an extra copy of just the most important stuff on a couple M-discs.

12DanArmak14y

For storing digital data, it's much better to pay the cryonics organization to store it for you. They can store multiple copies in separate locations, and verify their readability and compare their contents every few years. With many clients storing data, and with ever-decreasing storage costs as technology improves, this will also be much cheaper than physical DIY storage.