I am soul searching here.
I do not know which way to go for future archival of media. Media in my case is the raw images I shoot in, videos, backups of old family material like photos from devices.
What to do?
I have a 1.5 TB media drive in my machine now. It holds lots. However, it is getting full. In the past I have burned off to DVDs. That is becoming problematic as several times I need to span a single days worth of material on to multiple DVDs. A pain.
The next step for me is to find a bigger solution for holding "cold" backups. (not on-line, have to be pulled or found off disc or other non-active storage)
For my hot, or current, back-up solution- I am using BackBlaze. Love it- unlimited backups incase things go poof.
I also realize I am not an amazing corporation or super talented photographer. So elaborate rotation and backup is not the way for me to go. If I had my way, I would have a HUGE local NAS (Network Area Storage) with super on-line backup. However, money and effort being what it is- this is not a goal or need for me. Well, until I win the lottery.
I have found two possible solutions:
#1 Blu-Ray disc backups. A single layer, Blu-Ray disc can hold up to 25GB of data. Pretty good. The drawback- I don't have a blu-ray burner. So thats about $65 for the cheapest on NewEgg right now. Next is the cost per disc, which for a spinel of about 50 discs runs about $30. ($0.60 per disc of 25GB, or about $0.024 per GB)
#2 External hard-drive. There is a 3TB drive for $120 right now. ($0.04 per GB) Plug in, copy, paste- unplug and store.
The question for me is- what do I believe will fail? Spinning platters of the drive, or optical media? Both will not be moved. Both will sit until needed. Both have ups and downs for each.
I cannot figure out which way to go for cold storage back-up! UGH.
