Places to store data

This is a list/essay about places to store data, of varying permanence, cost, scale, etc -- mainly for use of ArchiveTeam material, but could be for any.

The first and most obvious choice is IA, the Internet Archive. They accept pretty much anything, of any scale, intend to keep all of it forever, and will distribute a very large range of material, particularly if no-one grumbles at them about it.

But it's good to put stuff in other places, too -- duplication keeps stuff safe, and something can't be erased from history if all the copies can't be found.

The first thing to think about when looking for a place to store data is: How much data is it? There are lots more places to dump a few kilobytes than are willing and able to accept a petabyte that needs a loving home.

Some good size categories (in order of increasing size) include: a few hashes; a few pages of text; a single video; a CD-ROM (half a gigabyte); a few dozen gigabytes; a terabyte; a petabyte.

Another important consideration is: human-readable text or not? While any byte sequence can be converted into human-readable (if boring) text, this generally expands it considerably, and tends to make people suspeious. So it's good to know what type of material a given place expects.

Below, grouped by size, are various suggested places to store data. Additional suggestions and commentary welcomed!