External hard drive or something else?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for some advice on the most secure way to archive my photos, videos, and other digital files for the long haul. I want to make sure they’re actually protected and won't just vanish into thin air...
I was thinking about picking up an External hard drive, maybe around 1TB, specifically just for this purpose. But then again, is that even enough space? I’m worried I’ll run out of room before I know it 😵 🤔...
Basically, is this a solid plan, or am I missing something better? How are you all handling your family archives and precious memories?
Best,

If you're looking to set up a backup, I'd suggest grabbing a SATA3 USB 3.x external hard drive with at least 2 TB of space. Though, if your data needs aren't particularly demanding, 1 TB will probably do just fine enough.

Eric Taylor55 said:Hey everyone, I’m looking for some advice on the most secure way to archive my photos, videos, and other digital files for the long haul. I want to make sure they’re actually protected and won't just vanish into thin air...
I was thinking about picking up an External hard drive, maybe around 1TB, specifically just for this purpose. But then again, is that even enough space? I’m worried I’ll run out of room before I know it 😵 🤔...
Basically, is this a solid plan, or am I missing something better? How are you all handling your family archives and precious memories?
Best,

To be honest, those 1TB external hard drives usually have a pretty lousy price-per-gigabyte ratio; you're much better off grabbing something in the 2TB to 4TB range. Only you can really determine your actual needs, but it isn't that difficult to tally up what you currently have and estimate how much your collection grows each year. It might also be wise to categorize your files by priority, since not everything carries the same sentimental weight. A truly robust backup strategy should always include a copy kept at a separate physical location.
Hard drives are essentially perishable goods, so you definitely want to consider having two separate units, and for your absolute most precious memories, maybe look into some M-disc DVD/Blu-ray media—those have a mineral layer that makes them far less susceptible to UV light or humidity compared to standard discs. My own experience with this has been quite positive, though whether they truly last 1,000 years like the marketing claims... well, I suppose we'll find out when we're all gone. 🙂

Just a quick tip: you could honestly just grab a SATA III hard drive, plug it directly into the cables inside your case, power it up, run the copy, and then shut everything down to unplug it. You’ll have your backup. No need to mess around with any screws.

Maybe that would be easier on your wallet.

This might be a more practical way to handle it:

You don't actually need to install the tray quite like the guy in the video shows; I usually just attach it directly to the cable or adapter, which works fine for me.

An External hard drive with SATA 3.0 to USB 3.0 is actually pretty decent—you can grab one up to 16TB and they’re surprisingly snappy even at 5400 rpm. But man, there’s a huge catch: they're fragile. One slip, one clumsy drop on the floor, and boom—you just lost tens of thousands of photos. Just gone.

Now, Blu-ray is way more rugged if you're worried about physical damage, but the capacity is tiny (maybe 25GB per disc) and it's slow as hell compared to an HDD (we're talking 35 MB/s versus like 500 MB/s). Sure, higher capacities are coming down the pipeline—think 1TB+—but who knows when that'll actually hit the mainstream? Plus, will you even have a player for them in ten years? And don't get me started on those rewritable ones; they can be super glitchy and lose data over time.

Then you've got flash drives (USB 3.0). Capacity and speed can rival an HDD (1TB+), and they're tough as nails—almost as much as a Blu-ray, assuming you don't go dropping them in a pool or something. You're also guaranteed to be able to plug one into a computer ten years from now. The only real downside is the price tag. My big question though: if you leave one sitting in a drawer without power for a decade, will the data actually still be there? Honestly, I haven't done enough digging to know for sure.

Bottom line? No matter what you choose, you've gotta run a data integrity check on your whole archive every couple of years and always, always keep a backup somewhere else.

I’d suggest grabbing a 1TB SSD and then just keeping an HDD on hand for your backups.
SSDs almost never fail.

I would suggest including some cloud options, such as Google Drive or Mega...
It is true that most of them offer about 15GB in their free tiers, but if you use Xali to combine them, you can actually stack quite a bit of space together.