I purchased a 4TB external hard drive to preserve all our pictures and records. It does very well but has a built-in flaw. Under normal circumstances it can be used to make .PDF copies of financial records, birth, marriage, death, military, and so on. However, unless it is "Faraday'ed', it would not be worth a hill of rocks. In other words, worthless. Especially if you have no computers around anywhere to open it up and retrieve the contents.
This flaw has caused me to double-think part of my preservation actions. And, I'm thinking in terms of a worst-case situation, that the EMP brings a financial collapse who would worry about bank records, mortgage records and so on? I am keeping hard copies of birth, some military records (DD Form 214 as an example), marriage, baptismal, death, diplomas, and other important certificates. The rest can get shredded and used as a fire starter.
