Best medias for long term file storage?

[ricardv87]

What is the best long-term storage media currently?

Is the free cloud reliable and safe to always keep my data or can it suffer a hacker attack or does the cloud service company itself delete the files?

[dpalomaki]

A subject of great debate. Assuming you speak of video the issues include:
- finding a player/viewer for it in the future (consider the problem with 8 track tapes and floppy discs today, or even consumer Beta tapes and HD-DVDs)
- in the case of third party storage providers, the likelyhood they will be in business 10, 20, 30 years from now
- do you want the third parties to have full and free access to your data, and where are their server farms
- the media itself - will it decay (e.g., organic dyes), corrode, be effected by storage conditions (heat, humidity, nearby fields including possible EMP. ALL electronic media (magnetic discs, NVRAM, tape can be erased or corrupted. All manufactured things can have latent defects, such as weak/leaking glue joints that may lead otherwise durable media to fail.
- maintenance of the stored information (e.g., copying/transcoding to new available formats as old formats become unusable and before they become unreadable)
- And equally important how long will anyone care about what is on the media. Finding and paying for 1000 year storage makes little sense of no one cares 30 years from now. (e.g., the video of the wedding that ended in divorce 3 years later) or there is no "Rosetta Stone" to use to make it readable..

Using a combination of different media types and both on site and off site storage with monitoring and maintenance are good strategies.

Some reports say M-DISC can be good for DVD and BD media, quality tape is knows to last for 40+ years without problems (I have some VHS from 1979) with proper storage, and stone has worked for ancient Egyptians for more than 6000 years. (On the other hand I have some CD-R and DVD-R media that failed after less than 3 years in normal residential (no attics or cellars) storage.

There are a number of studies and papers published by organization interested in archiving, including governments. Read them; and as you read ads from service/product vendors do so with a bit of skepticism - they are trying to sell their product.

[BarryTheCrab]

"...and stone has worked for ancient Egyptians for more than 6000 years." dpalomaki

I use this type of analogy all the time.
You can find a clay/stone tablet in the desert.
It can been subjected to fire, floods, baking sun, war, The Golden Girls, almost everything, it can even be broken into pieces, yet the data is often readable.
Try that with a DVD, you can't even scratch it.

[ricardv87]

DVD discs (MDISC) during storage suffer more from high temperature or high humidity? in my room i use a dehumidifier and it manages to keep the humidity most of the time at 58-60% but the temperature is 35C if i turn off the dehumidifier the humidity is constant at 71% but the temperature drops a little to 31-32C which method Is it less harmful to conservation?

[dpalomaki]

As I understand it, the weak point, to the extent there is one, with M-DISC technology is the packaging; i.e., the glue joints and plastic which are probably similar to other media. 35C is about 95F on the warm side. But M-DISC should fare no worse than other disc media with respect to package failure and better with respect to the recorded layer material. At least that is my understanding from the published research papers I've seen. Again manufacturing variances can undermine technology capability..

I like disc because it is large enough to handle and harder to lose compared to SD and micro SD cards. Of course information density (GB per CC if you will) is much higher on SD and SSD. Having backup copies in multiple formats is good for important stuff.

[ricardv87]

you didn't answer my question above if high humidity 73% and temperature 31-32C or humidity 58-60% and temperature 35C is worse

if the MDisc has the same glue and the same plastic as regular DVDs then it is false advertising

[BarryTheCrab]

Do a search here for Gamemaniaco, he asked every question possible, 2 or 3 times.

[dpalomaki]

Quote:

You didn't answer my question above if high humidity 73% and temperature 31-32C or humidity 58-60% and temperature 35C is worse

if the MDisc has the same glue and the same plastic as regular DVDs then it is false advertising

All advertising is largely hype and needs to be read in context, not taken as an absolute. M-DISC life specifically relates to the recording layer, and can be compromised by failure of other elements of the media which is very sensitive to manufacturing quality control.

Also, you are splitting hairs with a question no one can (or will) answer. Search for and read the old threads referenced above for a summary of the best available information related to media life and storage, and a lesson on how not to make others want to respond to more questions of this ilk.

My last post to this thread.

[Hushpower]

Throw in a set of HDDs too.

[ricardv87]

I think HDD is not reliable to keep for many years because it has mechanical parts that can get stuck when turning on the drive.

Is the manufacturing quality of DVD Millenniata MDisc and Verbatim MDisc good in plastic and glue? they are made in Taiwan

Is plastic and glue MDiscDVD disc more sensitive to high temperature or high humidity?

[ge0dude]

Hi, I believe this falls under the category of "update" for necroposting.

I always believed Magnetic Tape Storage was too expensive for the average person. The newer drives are in the thousands. I did however manage to pick up a working LTO-5 drive for about $32 shipped (mid-2025.)

LTO-5 gives you 1.5TB uncompressed, or 3TB compressed. Note that you cannot compress encrypted storage. I found a 5 pack of tapes for about $57, which comes out to about $11.40 per tape, or about $3.80 per terabyte.

LTO-6 drives I've seen for around $100, and the LTO gen pricing goes up from there. LTO-6 gives you 2.5TB Uncompressed and 6.25TB compressed.

LTO-10, the latest drive, gives you 30TB compressed and 75TB uncompressed. Of course the prices are astronomical, but if you take this seriously, and you value portability or lack physical storage space, it could be something to consider.

LTO Tapes last about 25-30 years. I wouldn't read and write to them too often. It depends on the particular brand and model, but I've read 250 reads and writes before replacing them.

I hope this helps

[Haunted_TBC]

I would just use the LordSmurf-approved 3-2-1 method. Put it all in Cloud storage, then also have it all on two new high-capacity hard drives (such as WD Elements) for everything else, with one of them kept in a different location very far away. The easy way to avoid the failure described by others is to just replace them with new drives as soon as possible once the warranty expires.

The issue with tape is the speeds that it runs at… perhaps this has been addressed, but the tape’s strength gets precariously low at high speeds and I do know instances of massive data loss happening when the tape fails at these speeds. It’s still really slow, the prices have not really come down much, and just a little crinkle on the tape can ruin things massively… even SSDs can probably put up with a bit more abuse than that.

[lordsmurf]

- all data = set of large HDD, 2x each, one for local, one for off-site (family in another city, etc)
- lots of data = optical media (DVD-R), also ideally 2x, one local, one not
- most important data only = "cloud"/server storage, but not for anything necessarily private (bank records, nude wife photos, etc) because hackers hack

LTO could take the place of optical.