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Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

I would place my bets on:

CD-R because it is still around after more than two decades and the media is still in production, there are many drives and they are repairable.

My second choice would be DVD-R for similar reasons, but less history.

Third choice would be FAT formatted spinning disks used as write once. But they are much more susceptible to environmental flux.

Anything that is expensive or hard to come by or new, I would avoid…they’re almost certainly going to be a Zip drive equivalent in 20 years because there is no consumer demand for physical storage and less and less commercial demand because of the cloud.

But that’s me so YMMV. Good luck.

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The issue with CD/DVDs is that they degrade quickly over time. The CDs I burnt in early 2000s had tons of read errors when I tried restoring in 2022.

Personally, I think storing data on an external Harddrive is the most stable option. You can keep upgrading the setup as required and the bit rot is minimal.

I backup my data on multiple drives, along with redundant copies stored in multiple locations.

I have heard good things about Tapes as well but have no personal experience with them.

I have fewer problems reading my C64 tapes and 5,25" floppies from 1984-1987 than reading my 1994-2001 CDRs and DVDRs.

I have heard that writable Blu-Rays are thought to be much more durable than all but the best DVD-R.

I wouldn’t doubt blue ray media being at least as reliable as DVD.

I don’t think the hardware was/is as widespread and I don’t expect blue ray was/is as commonly specified in government contracts, integrated into medical devices, etc.

My primary consideration with all digital media is what will the ecosystem be like in twenty years. How easy will it be to start with only a disk?

Blu-ray drives are in Playstations and Xboxen; if those drives can be cannibalized and used in a computer there will be millions available in the used market. Or you could jailbreak a console and install Linux just to use the drive.

Right now, today, I can just buy a Blu-ray burner at my nearby big box.

In 1997, I could say the same about Zip because Zip drives were everywhere until they weren’t because consumer behavior changed and CD-RW replaced the market.

There are still working Zip drives, but not a terrible many. Running one is only a matter of conjuring up a parallel port or scsi connection. Nevertheless most people who bet on Zip archives have regretted it sooner or later…and probably sooner.

Drives that read CD-R are almost anything that reads DVD or Blu-ray, plus all but the earliest CD drives. There’s not going to be a need to compete with gamers or retro computing enthusiasts.

That’s what I want in an archive strategy based on my experience over almost forty years. For me, archiving is enough of a project without involving jailbreaking a game console.

But that’s me and my bet. Other people have other priorities and I respect that.

Bitrot will claim the first two.

Go cloud, ZFS or tape.

Archival grade optical disks have an expected life of 100 years in archival conditions.

The cloud has a very low bus factor. Miss a payment and the data is gone. It provides high availability but low permanence and requires active management. It is inherently a poor archival medium.

“Tape” is a cluster of incompatible specifications and implementations. I know you don’t mean Quic 40, but that’s tape and about the last system that sold to regular computer users in big box retailers.

CDs and DVDs have error correction. As do hard drives, but it isn't baked in the spec. It's whatever the manufacturer thinks is enough.

> But they are much more susceptible to environmental flux.

Sadly, magneto-optical discs never caught on.

Really sadly if magneto-optical was your bet twenty years ago.

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