In theory maybe? But…I don’t know why one should.

Yeah, that’s sounds solid. Just make sure your next of kin know where to look and that there is something to look for.

External HDs are good for short term backup - I do use them for that myself.

But they are not suitable for long term backup, they are susceptible to damage, sector errors,bit rod and interference.

If you leave them unpowered for longer times the chances that the mechanical components are gonna fail are actually increased.

Some of these issues can be reduced,but never fully.

Additionally there are ransomware viruses that directly attack them - they intentionally encrypt the backups first when the drives are connected before they attack the live data. And in at least one case I know of the attackers bricked the HD firmware.

Therefore for long term storage of really important things WORM (write once read many) media is to be preferred - even if the attackers can access the disk for some reason they cannot alter the once written data.

Ah, a Kiwi. Say hello to your sheep’s from me. (Sorry,former WA resident here, couldn’t resist)

But yeah, we are using exactly that model - and it’s currently only 20 NZD less from what I pay wholesale in Europe for it. So it seems like a pretty decent price.

The drive itself is solid. We currently have around 10, maybe 15, at our clients and it works without any hassle.

I personally recommend to store the disk’s offsite(I store them in a locked box in a bank vault) and some of my clients choose to store another drive there to be extra safe,but I personally don’t see the point.

3-2-1 is the minimal consensus and not recommended anymore for everything you need to reliably have access to after a long time - the fact that some ransomware viruses intentionally have a very time they are laying low to decrypt old and rarely used files is one of the main reasons. Healthcare, finance, taxation, accounting, etc. are all sectors that heavily rely on WORM media and long term tape storage.

You are right that a spinning disk often can work for 10 years - but there is a reason they are exchange earlier in a professional setting. Not all of them will. And you were talking about cold storage disks. This is something even the manufacturers do not recommend - for a reason.

Personally I store all “Very important data” on it - things I really don’t want to loose even if my data storage at home and my cloud storage gets compromised. Among them:

• Photos of life events. Wedding, photos of the kids, photos of relatives that are now deceased, etc.

• Important documents. Birth certificates, copies of IDs, passports, insurance documents, degrees and certificates, banking/taxation/accounting documents, bills for the important stuff like major renovations, the expensive IT stuff, etc.*

• Backup of important files (for me Uni files for my lectures, some work files, backup of the password DBs, plans for the house, a tutorial how to receive files from the cloud storage, decryption keys, etc.)

(*: This is more a theoretical choice - as I can get 100GB media for the same price as the 50GB I currently simply copy the full paperless file storage. But the script normally only copies these. They are flagged with a custom field in paperless)

I do not use addition to the storage,so no “these files are new since the last copy” but I simply make a full backup of these files every time (usually three times a year). This reduces the risk of one backup being compromised - very likely I only fall back 4 month which is tolerable. The discs itself are stored in a locked box in a bank vault a bit further away. I have to go there a few times a year anyway,so it’s not hassle. (And they have great coffee). The box costs me 50€ a year and has enough room for 50 years of M Disks and a few extra items.

Anything taxation related must be stored for 10 years even by private individuals here,so there is that.

My customers (smaller health care organisations, e.g. your fellow neighbourhood dentist or GP) usually store patient data and accounting data on them. They need to store them long term (up to 30 years) for legal reasons, additionally they don’t want a opposing lawyer to later tell them “you have manipulated the data”. Having multiple copies that cannot be manipulated reduces that claim to “you manipulated before you stored it” and we have other ways to fight that.

There are still problems with the hard drive solutions:

• Powering up the drives for a short period does not help with error correction when sectors get compromised

• As said before it is relatively risky as mechanical parts of HDs do not like to be moved only occasionally. While this problem has become less severe over the last years it still exists.

• The updating will include copying from one drive to another - this process is highly suspectable to errors that might be correct with the right file systems - but it’s not a guarantee.

• And the main problem: You want to achieve a long shelf life - which means you must consider periods of time when you might not be able to maintain the data. What happens when you are not able to do so? And your next of kin are not quite ready to go through your things? To give you an example: You copy your data on the HDs today, maintain the disk’s for four years and want to change disk’s in 5, which means in 2030. Sadly a weeks before you are able to do so, John,your neighbourhood’s stupid school bus driver hits you and you suffer a major traumatic brain injury. Even worse,you don’t die right away but suffer for another 5 years in a nursing home before a infection gets you. Your family meanwhile is not quite ready to get through your things as you are still alive, aren’t you? (For real,this is the case a lot) After your funeral it takes them another year to finally get through all your things. Now your drives haven’t been used for 7 years. Even worse,one of them slips through your next of kind hand and hits the ground hard. How big do you think the chances are the data is still available? I think we both know the answer. While M-Disks are also suspectable to damage there are hardened multi-disk cases that make them pretty much indestructible - nothing any HD case can ever achieve.

You need a designated M Disc capable burner,yes. (Not generic BDXL,there are slight differences) There are a few on the market though - they cost around 100-150 bucks usually.(In theory you can use a regular writer sometimes - I know people who do that,but why risk that?) I usually recommend the verbatim to my clients,they are dirt cheap and work flawlessly so far.

For reading the discs any regular data-capabale blue ray disk drive will do.

This is actually terrible advice. WORM media exists for a reason and telling someone with a mere 3-2-1 he will never loose data is absolutely irresponsible.

Neither is it a good idea to use regular hard-disk for offsite-cold storage. A really really bad idea.

Hard drives loose their data fast if not powered (within a few years),so do SSD based media. Furthermore the former are very suspectable to mechanical destruction, electromagnetic interference,etc. And even if for some reason your drives last that long there will be nothing to connect them to - you know how we connected hard drives 25 years ago? Via SCSI/IDE. Good luck finding a converter to these now. If you go back further you need ISA controllers for the drives.

This is a really bad idea. Really really bad, especially with the goal you want to achieve. Your data will be gone within 5 to 10 years.

Wrong post, ignore this.

So basically no,you haven’t.

Got any evidence for that claim?

Currently the only solution for a consumer are M-Disc Blue rays. They are currently the only “write once read many” media available that are preferable in these types of situations.

The media is comparable cheap - you can safe your amount of data for around 80-90USD/€ initially(or less for more but smaller discs) and then pay around 10$/€ per year for the new amount of data.

The chances that in 20 years someone is still able to read them are fairly high - there are numerous businesses that are using these disc as WORM media to backup important data on a medium that a opposing lawyer later cannot claim “was manipulated”. In 50 years it is very likely to be readable at least by professionals. The discs itself are rated for much longer storage.

If you write on them unencrypted there should be no problem of writing on them. Additionally they do not have issues with byte rot,etc.

That is not gonna work - read up on byte rot.

M-Disc/Archive Blue ray discs are currently pretty much unrivaled if one needs WORM(write once read many) storage for important data.

Anything cloud is an issue in that regards, while a few options exist that somewhat imitate WORM to comply with regulations they are often expensive, harder to maintain and, if long term storage is required, prohibitivly expensive.

The next option, Tandberg RDX needs a far less popular writer, it’s WORM media is far more expensive, far more sensitive towards exterior influences and it’s much harder to make sure you will be able to read the data in 20 years.

LTO is nice, the tapes are somewhat cheap but the drives are extremely expensive - far to expensive for smaller businesses or consumers.

(And please for the love of god, normal exterior HDs,etc. are NOT backup media for long term storage, especially not WORM- which is important in times of ransomware attacks)

So in the end verbatim would be an absolute idiot to destroy this market. I work with a lot of smaller healthcare facilities and they all exclusively work with them - they routinely burn their data on a M-Disc that is then stored in a secure location, as they all need to provide their patient records for at least 10, mostly for 15, in some cases for 30 or more years. The doctors can literally go to jail if they do not comply with that.(And getting hacked or your building burning down is not an excuse)

As a CEO of a small company we also need to retain certain tax and accounting data for 10 years, some for 20 years. And even as a individual I have some stuff I legally must retain for 10 years.

And of course photos of important life events and some documents (insurance, mortgage) are also something I don’t want to loose if the house burns down. Therefore the important stuff gets burned to a M-Disc three times a year and then locked into a bank vault quite a bit away.

None of that is relevant to a self burned M/Archive BD

A friend of mine worked on the team that wrote the EU AI legislation. He is a fucking genius and so are his colleagues. There is little chance he can simply “change the definition of open source”. He might be able to challenge the EU definition in court and postpone paying,but be will pay.

The brussels bureaucracy is a absolutely fed up with US tech bro antics by now and both Microsoft and Google have already learned their lesson. Zuckerbergs Meta still tries to resist,but he will fall as well.

Funnily this is absolutely speed up by their antics in the US as this leads to more and more lawmakers here realising that the European societies need to be protected from them the same way it needs to be protected from China.

As others have already said: Prevention is a point: There are people who should not be out in the open,honestly. I worked with people who rightfully will not be freed unless they are basically close to hospice care. They are dangerous and some even say this of themselves. I worked with a nice gentleman who shared his recipes with me. For cooking human meet - which he had real life experience in as he killed his family and ate parts of them. (He is very likely dead by now) Another guy raped at least 30 woman/girls,some as young as 5, and tried to rape female staff around him while in a psychiatric hospital (and in a regular hospital that just saved his life after another patient attacked him).

Should these people be kept separated from the society? Yes. Should they be miserable and suffer for the rest of their life? No. They are still human and the absolutely abysmal conditions in the prison systems of some countries, especially the US are a disgrace.

I am fairly happy that at least in my country the constitutional courts have set clear boundaries how prisoners and institutionalised patients have to be treated, especially after they served their jail time and are only kept locked up for preventional reasons. And that the level of danger to the society they posses needs to be reassessed periodically.

The other side is punishment. I am far less certain about this side of the issue - prison terms have a deterrent effect to most people,but not all of them. And it seems that we haven’t yet found a good way to address this. For most people the thought of being locked up and therefore being under total external control does at least give them enough “discomfort” to not actually do anything stupid and if they do they often are at least “suffering” from that enough to not do it again.

Suffering is initially set into “” here, as it is not meant to equal actual suffering like what some politicians and some populations want. The inmate suffers enough by being deprived of his/her freedom, being under external control. We know that for sure. They do not need to be punished more by make their life hell. The same goes for “extremely long sentences for minor stuff”. Firstly this does actively endanger the population. We have pretty good data around sexual assault for that. We can surely agree that rape is a horrible crime and a rapist should be punished. But making rape as bad as murder is a bad idea. Because now the perpetrator has no incentive to not kill his victim - instead the perpetrator now has one to do so. If he/she goes to prison for the same amount of time, why not reduce the risk of victim identifying them? Same goes for the act itself - when every sexual assault is rape for some perpetrators their sick logic comes to the conclusion that they can go “all in” anyway. (I literally have been told that by an inmate)

The same goes for “life sentences without the option for parole”. This leads to only one thing: You have an inmate with nothing to loose. Once they learned to survive the first stint in solitary and without the things “good behaviour” can get you, they will have nothing that the prison staff can take away from them - and they can take away a lot from everyone else. Therefore punishment must always give people hope - hope that they will get out at some point. Even though there are some that are unlikely to live to that point.

Lastly we know that bad conditions in prisons and a lack of reintegration as well as the stigma that some countries (e.g. the US) put on their inmates actively push people into reoffending because they develop mental health problems, can’t find a stable life outside the prison,etc.

Anyway: the main problem OP has is a different one - it’s the lack of help people with chronic diseases are getting. This is what makes their destiny far worse than that of prisoners - because they are always in it for life.

If you are really sure about the disk space requirements you can easily get one of the endless mini PCs with a N100 or a small Intel on it and chuck two NVMe’s in it and let these run as RAID1.

Have a decent backup plan,though.