Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "What’s the Best Long Term Storage Media? Tips to Avoid Losing Data in Your Lifetime" video.

Yes, this is why using HDD is such a good idea and why you need to copy those files to a new drive from time to time as there's new formats available. But, that being said, storage formats for HDD and SSD are pretty stable at this point, you're not likely to be in that position any time soon. You're far more likely to have the disks themselves fail before the lack of hardware to read and transfer them becomes a problem.
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@JimboJS In this situation, that more or less means copy it. You always need a backup, some method of verifying the files haven't become corrupt and some way of fixing it if they do become corrupt. Using a Par2 utilitly, helps with verifying and error correction. (Basically it creates extra copies with signatures so that you can identify and correct the errors) You can also go with a filesystem like ZFS that has such facilities built in, assuming that you're using a configuration that uses multiple drives for that.
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@vvll9617 There's a lot of reasons that can happen. Bad power, user error, bad batch of drives, just bad luck. Investing in a line conditioner, with or without power backup is well worth it. This is also why I spend most of my computer use time on a computer with RAID5. It doesn't replace backups, but it does reduce the risk of silent data corruption messing up the backups I make. A couple times a month, I make ZFS touch every single sector on the disk and check to make sure that there have been no unexpected changes.
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@wilsonfreitas8418 Yes, the P in PDF stands for Portable. Unless there are advanced features like that, then it should open fine on any computer. You may have issues with forms data, or filling out the PDF, but I've never encountered a PDF that wouldn't open at least enough to read on random other OSes.
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@DisgruntledPigumon Given the age of floppy disk drives, I think that's rather appropos.
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Metal also works well. They've found metal with writing banged into it from thousands of years ago. The main issues with these things is simply that the storage density is terrible. Also, archival paper will last a lot longer than one would expect.
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@whitenutter The correct answer is when you lose faith in the drive whether or not the warranty has expired.
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@mjakotka Yes, and this is why I both have comprehensive online backups of any file that can't be automatically generated. (No need to backup the individual episode files for TV series if the original DVD ISO files are being backed up. Or individual MP3s if I've got the entire album backed up as a lossesless file with cue information) I also use a ZFS ZRAID5 array so that bit rot can be detected and repaired regularly so that I don't find myself in the position of having files that have been corrupted since the last time I opened them.
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It's a tough question, but I think the physical medium is less of an issue than what options allow for easy backup, verification and replication of those files. Personally, anything smaller than a Blu-ray disc is just not worth considering. You'd have to spend so much time swapping discs to verify the contents that it wouldn't be worthwhile. Personally, I use a combination of online backups (A good online backup service will have a way of backing up a copy locally as well as online. Most of the time you don't need the online backup, that's just if the building burns down or somebody steals your stuff) and a ZFS ZRAID-5 to store my files. They can be quickly scrubbed to discover read errors on an automatic basis and to report any files where the checksum does not match with the expected value and repair the damage. If it can't be repaired, it will tell me precisely which files I need to recover from my backup. I've had multiple disks go bad in this arrangement, and I just keep a spare just in case a drive does start to go bad. I have yet to lose any data due to a hard disk failing since then, and most of the time I don't even need to touch my online backup other than to verify that the files are good. I haven't had a chance to do it, but I need to set up an offline set of disks that I can quickly mirror from time to time. The vast majority of the files I have on my computer do not change very often, so having those files backuped up to storage media that I only need to plug in from time to time to verfiy and update would be good for me. I just don't have the money right now for 2 8tb disks.
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@williamjones4483 I always make a copy of those discs using something like infrarecorder. (Specific software doesn't really matter, but that one is free and reliable) If the software is that important, I'd recommend also creating a par2 file to allow for verification and recovery of the file if it starts to rot. Quickpar works pretty well for that on Windows, but there are other options.
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@SevenSixTwo2012 Whether or not that's true is largely irrelevant, you still need to bring them online from time to time to verify the data and to make sure that the files you care about are there. I'd do that at least a couple of times a year. Plug it in, run the disk through a verification tool, and then unplug it and put the disks away. Depending on how important the data is, it can be worth doing this on a different computer, and in a different location from where the data was generated and unplug that computer while you go through the verification process. Obviously, that's far more effort than you'd typically need, but if the data is that precious, it can be worth it.
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@tnndll4294 Probably not. What can happen with DVD-Rs and the like is that the layers can start to separate, the dye fade and whether they're in sleeves or cases probably wouldn't make that much of a difference. They are a terrible medium for archiving just because it is such a labor to load them into a drive to ensure that they weren't corrupted since the last time you used them. The only time when such a medium really makes sense is if you need to prove the the files weren't tampered with. In that case, you'd want to use something like par2 to generate the parity information necessary to detect and repair damage.
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I wouldn't do anything important with an SSD, the way they fail is terrifying. Most of the time, a standard HDD will give some hint. Obviously not always, but I've had many fail over the last few decades and 100% of them gave hints ahead of time that they were failing and to make one last backup before replacing them, with the time before last having 10mb of unrecoverable data on the disk. Not a big deal, the data was backed up, I just like a copy of all those files so I know if I was able to restore everything.
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@psp420bam You shouldn't. When that thing goes, you may not receive any warning at all. The data will just be gone with no hope of recovery. SSDs are fast, but they're not very safe for data.
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