Long Term Storage Questions

[Chmewy]

So I need to store video clips that I have for personal reasons. I currently am storing them on a Hard Drive. Now I want to be able to view these for years, maybe even decades. My main idea was a Hard drive. I know I would need to Format the drive and put everything back on it every like 2 years and such. Later on I would also move the files from Drive to Drive as well, such as moving it to a SSD for example down the road, and to what ever is new after that. What I really need to know is what Hard drive for right now is a good option? I want it to be around 500 GB and less. I will store the videos on different hard drives as I need so if anything was to happen to one drive, not everything would be lost. Also for bonus questions... I know file types will come and go, but do you think .wmv will be around much longer and should I compress my videos with Winrar, or will I not be able to access them without it?

[DailyProcrastinator]

If its just long-term storage why not just an external hard drive? Seagate and Western Digital both have good products. I use them all the time even for file sharing with co-workers, they don't have amazing read and write speeds but still are good and they generally last a long time.

[Cyracus]

You could use any decently reliable drive, since you want to store them dump the files onto it, shutdown the computer and disconnect it, probably a good idea to connect it every 5 years or so. I know drives can hold data for quite a while but if they don't get run occasionally the data can corrupt (I'm sure it's well over 5 years time)

[Nocte]

If it's for long-term storage, I would consider a home server / NAS in RAID 1. If one disk dies, you are not going to lose your files. And you would be able to access your files from multiple devices. But this depends on how big your files are.

 

Or just get a cloud storage plan.

[Chmewy]

2 hours ago, JM21 said:

If its just long-term storage why not just an external hard drive? Seagate and Western Digital both have good products. I use them all the time even for file sharing with co-workers, they don't have amazing read and write speeds but still are good and they generally last a long time.

Thats what I meant.... Just wanted to know if there were better ones than just those brands

[DailyProcrastinator]

16 hours ago, Chmewy said:

Thats what I meant.... Just wanted to know if there were better ones than just those brands

I mean unless you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on high end external hard drives I would say no, Seagate and Western Digital are your best bet. 

 

Something like this would suffice: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00H4XH5IG/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

I own probably 4 of them and they have all been reliable and are fairly inexpensive, plus the easy portability makes them more functional.