File Back Up System for long term storage

sh410 wrote:
I Have been asking myself: "what will I do with all of these photos that I have stored on dvd-r's?"

After I'm gone, the components used to store photos may well be considered obsolete. For example, dvd read/writers are not included on many computers and certainly not on tablets or phones. Further I'm not sure my decendants will be interested in digital photos. They do like photographs.

What do you all think.

Burnable optical media tends to fail over time, I have had countless amount of burned CDs that were good when burned but in a few years of being stored out of light started to become unreadable.

No one really knows the actual life span of the dyes used in burnable CDs, DVDs and even bluRays..

And I suspect over time finding a working optical reader will become a huge problem..

So I am not sold that they will ALL be readable in a few years let alone 20 or 50 yrs down the road.

I have also had several USB flash drives and a few SD memory cards fail.. Even had two brand new SD memory cards fail right out of the packaging.

I have seen a few SSD drives fail in the very short time they have been out.

I have had several ONLINE storage outfits go belly up and disappear into the wobbly web with my online content so I do not have any faith or trust in paid or free "cloud" type storage as a long term safe place to store important docs..

So far the only real "dependable" storage I have found is the good old fashioned mechanical Hard Drive.

External HDs at this time do seem to be the best way to store your important files..

As far as folks concerned about on site storage, why worry, don't you have a fire resistant "safe" for your important paper docs? You SHOULD if you don't..

External USB hard drives can be had in Laptop size and are no bigger than a pack if cigarettes.. Should have no problem fitting it into even a small portable fire resistant safe..

Or store one drive in your RV..

Many ways to go about it.