What should I use.

[Len Hobbel]

Okay simple and straight.. I have several 1 TB HDs full of stuff i want to keep as long as I am a live.
1000s of music videos and movies downloaded ( got to love youtube for so much FREE stuff )
A million or more pictures.
I have been beating my brain BLU-RAY it all or more and bigger Hard DrivesS that will fail in a few years or use USB drives.
I dont need to keep it all..but a damn lot of it i want to keep.
which one so confused...

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Len Hobbel.

First of all if you don't want to keep all of your data, you should organize it and separate the data you want to keep no matter what. I know that you have a ton of files and it's probably going to be a really long and tedious process, but it's worth it.
Having a backup option is definitely necessary in your case if you want to never lose those files. Which means that you shouldn't just store them on Blu-Ray disks or external HDDs - you should have at least 2 copies of that data (e.g. one on your current HDDs and the exact same data somewhere else). This is necessary in case one of the drives fail at some point, so that you can use the backup to restore it.
For that much data, perhaps having them on a cloud or a NAS (either personal or cloud service) as well might be a good idea. Especially if you've set that device to RAID 1.
A Blu-Ray disk library with all your media files is not a bad idea either. Basically it all depends on your personal preference and most importantly - budget.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Archaic59]

If you opt for dvd or blu-ray be sure to buy archival grade discs and they must be sealed from humidity and high temperatures. Verbatim Gold Archival DVD-R has a good rating.

 

[13thmonkey]

USB drives are NOT a good idea, I've had more USB sticks fail on me than I have had HDDs fail.

Consider something like a drobo box, stocked with HDD's with some marked up as spares. Then you have time to recover. But that will not prevent the 'fire and flood' type issues.