For me I had a stack dvd blanks left over, I decided to save a little bit of money and used them to back up folders of childhood photos, documents etc and place them inside their own jewel cases.
I do have a 2TB external HDD, But that I throw on LARGE steam game back ups and movies.
Sure, the “cloud” exists and I use that too but what if your intewebz goes down, good luck getting your backups until it’s back up.
What do you use? Optical media, tape drives etc?
I prefer optical media if possible. Should survive a few decades, assuming good quality discs.
But I’d much rather use LTO tape if it wasn’t so expensive to get the drive.
Just the other day I came across some CDs that I used to back up some important data about 15 years ago (and which I thought I’d lost). They were absolutely pristine 👌
I have a couple of older drives used to back up photos and MP3s. They’re mirrored in case one falls.
I transferred my optical media to those drives just for accessibility but the discs are still in my garage somewhere. Lol
Burnable discs have a limited life span. Make sure you have duplicates, and test them regularly.
Why not? As long as you have more than one copies, and you validate their integrity over time, it shouldn’t be a problem.
I have a 2.5” drive with music that I made that’s ten years old and probably full of bit rot. I should replace that.
I have like 5 USB drives which I save stuff on, I happen to have a lot of games on the one hard drive I store the majority of my games on, and that drive has made it emphatically clear in recent months that it is on its way out. Uploading to the cloud never quite piqued my interest.