this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2025
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Hardware

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[–] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

TBH I would consider one of these. I've been thinking about using discs for long-term backups, and I've also been planning to start buying music and stuff more instead of effectively renting from streaming services.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 14 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Most writable disks have a poor life. the only good long term backup option is lots of redundancy and regular check that they are all readable - recreating what isn't before you lose it

[–] anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, gotta use ISO/IEC 18630 certified discs and burner to ensure longevity.

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's a good start, but the most effective backup is manually carving the binary contents of a file onto steel plates that are many miles long.

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Steel decays pretty quickly. The most durably data storage medium we've figured out is still ceramics

[–] exu@feditown.com 4 points 1 week ago

Metal can not be changed by Ruin

Maybe wrong community for this

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Well there we go.

[–] anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Honestly I just go for redundant drives and 3-2-1 backups, I remember looking at those pioneer bluray discs when they were announced and quickly deciding it wasn't worth the cost.
Your steel plate backup system sounds intriguing though - maybe it can be used as wallpaper? "What's that on your walls?" "My wedding photos"

[–] krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The great part of that idea is that no one will think you're crazy when they see painstakingly carved rows of binary covering every surface of your home.

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Will they know it's binary? Surely the dots would be so small it looks like noise unless there's an emerging pattern from file headers etc

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

CDs are rated for 10–30 years,, Blurays for 50–80. YMMV with cheap low quality disks, of course.

[–] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

As someone else mentioned, CDs, DVDs, and especially BDs are supposed to last quite a while. I'd obviously burn more than one though and check them occasionally (and probably throw most of it on encrypted cloud storage in case there's a fire or something).

[–] oeuf@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 week ago

I recently found some cheap CDs and DVDs that I backed my stuff up on 17 years ago and the data was pristine 👌

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wouldn't it better to buy a BD/DVD drive for desktop? This way you can rip movies/music and access them on any device.

[–] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

I mean, I'd still have the physical collection then, which would just be sitting there picking up dust. Even with it ripped, I'd probably still want to use the disc sometimes. I also tend to displace things like CD drives if I don't use them for a while lol (I have a CD/DVD drive somewhere, but I have no idea where I put it), which makes the backup idea sort of problematic.

[–] unphazed@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've looked pretty extensively into this. My plan is to get a disk toaster and pick up some refurb drives, around 8tb or so. The cost of a good bluray burner is about $160, and each 100yr disc is $11 for 50gb. Meanwhile the toaster is $30, and HDDs are about $150 new for 8tb, less with refurbs. I just know that one coaster run of a bluray burn would send me off to a tirade. Less space, less cost, less risk of damage, and more likely to be useable in the future. Bonus for read speeds and rewrite ability.

[–] arcterus@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think if you've got a ton of data, that does make more sense. I personally don't think I have much that I think is super important though (at the least atm, it'd mostly be photos). The drives will likely die earlier though.

[–] unphazed@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

My photos rest on my 8tb WD Pro NAS drive, and OMV does a backup on another smaller 2TB drive. I also have an external 2TB for occasional extra backups. I plan on converting all my dvdr and cdrs into hdd data. Sadly, a bunch of my cdrs are kaput, rotted and falling apart. I never realized how important it was to buy burnable media that uses chemicals instead of organic dyes. I guess I just assumed 15yrs ago it was all chemical.