Western Digital 4TB WD Blue PC Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40EZAZ

Western Digital 4TB WD Blue PC Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD40EZAZ

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dcabines posted on r/datacurator200w

I suggest you don't rely on any one thing lasting that long and instead transfer the data to a new place every few years as well as keeping multiple copies and some kind of validation like parity. How much data you need to store and how often you want to add to it will impact what your best solution will look like. I'd consider something like this: Burn DVDs. They'll last you 50 years and they are cheap enough to burn multiple copies. Just be sure to get a good quality DVD-R and not DVD-RW. The Samsung 850 Pro has a 10 year warranty. SSDs are way more expensive than HDDs, but worth considering as part of your backup solution. For HDDs I like to keep 5 cheaper drives in an enclosure and run a parity program on them instead of relying on more expensive drives. The best warranty is 5 years and cheap drives have 3 year warranties, so the expensive stuff doesn't seem to be worth it for this use. These drives will give you access to everything so you aren't touching the DVDs more than you have to. So, you take pictures and videos and store them on the SSD. Once a week you boot up the external enclosure, copy the new data to it, run the parity program, and shut it down again. Keeping it turned off most of the time may extend its life. Every time you have enough new data to fill a DVD burn off a few and stash them in a well labeled DVD book. Consider storing the DVD book somewhere off-site like in a safety deposit box or something. Maybe mail a copy to a trusted friend. Every few years you swap out the HDDs with something bigger and newer to contain your ever growing collection. Only pull out a DVD in case of catastrophe so they last as long as possible, but maybe copy them after a few decades. Good luck!