Best longterm solution?

Good day folks.

I am seeking to take my PC to repairs recently, but I wish to move about 1TB worth of data.

And some of it, well honestly- most of it I’d like to archive. Perhaps I’d find it useful in the future, like videos I made, as well music, etc.

I’m the kind who finds it difficult to part with old data, and I like to revisit the past.

What do you think is the best way to archive about 1TB worth of data, and hopefully have it last for years to come?

I hear that external Harddrives and USB sticks are not made to last, and I did hear about M-Disc.

But is there perhaps a better option?

4 comments

HDD, always.

And plug It often or data eill erase (AKA defragmentation).
- And plug It often or data eill erase
  
  That's not what fragmentation or defragmentation means.
The best way is to make multiple copies on multiple storage mediums and regularly check for any data degradation. There is no one single format that will last long term. Everything has a chance of failure for an infinite number of reasons.

You only need to store one TB, just buy a pair of 2TB hard drives, check the data yearly, and then whenever the warranty expires buy some new drives and copy the data over. That's about as simple and safe as it'll be for you.
Either pay a cloud storage provider about $4/month to hold it for you, or buy a couple external drives and verify your backups yourself about once a year then replace drives as they eventually fail.

I figure the break even point is about two and a half years. If you're committed to hoarding your content for longer than that, buy storage drives. If not, rent cloud storage. If your drives die in less than that you would have been better with cloud storage, but that isn't likely.