So you have a photo and video archive and want to preserve it for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Where to store it? I did some research and found only one option, which is rather affordable overall.
First, why are the others not as good? Any cloud solution is potentially unreliable, as it depends on the long-term stability of the provider, risk of data loss due to cyber attacks or infrastructure failure, political processes, good air defense, and the need for ongoing payments.
CD/HDD/SDD/tape are generally better when maintaining control over humidity/temperature/lighting, but still, no one guarantees more than 20 years. A flash drive could start losing data as soon as in five years. Magnetic tapes are better, but they also gradually demagnetize, and accessing data is relatively slow — a special reader, which is quite niche, is necessary, and it’s unclear what the situation will be in 40-50 years, and they won’t last much longer than that.
It seems that the only remaining option is M-DISC discs. It is claimed that M-DISC has a lifespan of 1000 years. It is made from a durable inorganic material similar to stone, which does not degrade over time, heat, or light. It is supported by many modern DVD and Blu-ray drives, although an M-DISC-compatible drive is needed for recording. M-DISC capacity is 4.7 GB (DVD-R), 25 GB (BD-R), 50 GB (dual-layer BD-R), or 100 GB (BD-XL). Clearly, these are all write-once, essentially like carving into granite.
As for the cost — an external USB drive with BDXL M-DISC recording capability costs about $100, although there are options for $50, and BDXL discs cost about $10-12 each (100 GB).
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 