Long Term Storage for video footage

[CurryLemon]

Hi everyone!

 

My father traveled a lot in his youth, mainly through Africa, and he filmed a lot during those years. Now, he's been digitalizing his Super 8mm films to 1080p, thanks to a setup he build himself.

But sadly, my father passed away a year ago. Now I have all this footage that I want to conserve for as long as possible. If you're interested in the kind of footage he stores, he had a YouTube channel with snippets of his travels.

Here's a link to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/8mmFreak/videos

 

Now the thing is that I'm new to long term storage, and I'd be thankful if you could help me find something that would serve this purpose. I was thinking of using a DAS or NAS, and use RAID for redundancy.

But I've never worked with those in the past and I'm afraid I'll lose the footage, as it's just on external HDD, without any backup as of right now.

I wouldn't use the network feature if it's a NAS, and there's no new footage that's getting added. So its just conservation of existing footage.

 

Thank you for your attention and help.

Have a nice day!

 

Edit: Fixed link.

Edited February 16, 2020 by CurryLemon

[Chiyawa]

Hmm... Have you ever thought of using Blu-ray M-Disc? It's a special BD-R disc that could retain the files for up to 1000 years (according to what many manufacturer claims). You might need a blu-ray writer that support M-Disc in order to do that, but this method is pretty straight forward as Windows Explorer in Windows 10 comes with its own disc burner plug-in, just drag and drop and hit burn to disc when done, no need for third party software (although third party software provide better GUI and more accessible tools).

 

Here's what a typical M.Disc looks like:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011PGT2FQ/ref=psdc_668575011_t1_B017YO969K?th=1

 

Suggested M-Disc Blu-Ray writer (I personally own one, and it did a good job so far, though this only comes with the drive alone, no cables nor driver disc included)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007VPGL5U/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

More info on M-Disc (and how the disc could theoretically hold data for 1000 years):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

[CurryLemon]

Wow, I hadn't considered Discs, but these seem to fit the purpose quite successfully. It seems to be quite cost effective too!

I had never heard of M-Discs...

Thank you a lot Chiyawa! I'll look further into it

[Chiyawa]

You're welcome.

[kokosnh]

LTO tape?

[RejZoR]

Problem with optical media is that you need to check it regularly and move it to newer mediums before old ones become obsolete. Imagine moving VHS today to a DVD or BluRay. Some companies are doing it, but isn't cheap. Doing it at home is very hard. Where doing it 10-15 years ago was still relatively possible. So, there's that. Using reliable cloud and/or HDD storage is probably the best option. Depending on how important the content is...

[kokosnh]

HDD are not good for long storage, M-Discs are better, and LTO tape is even better.

[Robchil]

22 hours ago, kokosnh said:

HDD are not good for long storage, M-Discs are better, and LTO tape is even better.

Agree on the HDD, data corrupts often, for a private collection m-discs are cheapest solution and can be viewed directly off the media,  just keep a compatibel blueray player ,  LTO3 tapes can't be accessed on an LTO6 device etc, last i checked they only went one version up and down, and are way more expensive than blueray, both tapes and and devices, so more suited for company backup.