Long-term archival storage, your suggestions?

[redmoose11]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some suggestions on how to store some very important data long-term. I'm talking family heirloom photos, stuff of very important sentimental value - our wedding pics, vacations, pics of deceased relatives, etc. I currently have about ~150 GB worth of this stuff with much more to be added in the future I'm sure. I'm wanting this data to be around a long time, 50+ years, stuff that will be around for many generations.

I'm embarrassed to admit that my only backup solution at the moment is that I have made single DVD backups of all of these photos and I have them stored digitally on a dedicated RAID 1 array in my computer. I feel like a double-fail situation could be right around the corner.

I was looking into archival quality DVDs but I wanted to get some opinions first. Are these as reliable as they are made out to be? If I made two copies of each DVD, what are the chances those could be spun up with no problem in 30 years' time?

I was also thinking of buying a NAS or some other sort of dedicated RAID solution, but wanted to keep costs fairly low. I suppose I wouldn't need to keep it running 100% of the time.

If you have any suggestions at all, I would very much appreciate hearing them. Thanks.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

It's a tough decision what to use. It's not so much the longevity of the storage media, it's whether the device to access that media will be around in 30 years time. So to guard against that you have to copy your existing backups to whatever new storage device is launched in the years ahead.

Personally I'd use dual layer DVD-R media (needs a compatible burner of course) because that currently is the latest innovation for optical storage, and for the media brand I'd go with Verbatim.