My total data footprint counts in the hundreds of Gigabytes (about 500 right now) and I’m looking to add an archival solution in addition to the backup I have (hard drives).
Blu-ray drives and disks are cheap enough, and with 100GB in a 8-15$ disk, the deal looks very sweet.
I have used DVDs successfully as archival medium: DVDs that were written 10 years ago are still readable today; no errors. And now I want to use BR disks the same way. Write a disk, store it (in reasonable conditions inside my home) and be able to read the data 5 years into the future. 10 years would be amazing but 5 is acceptable.
I know that there can never be a guarantee on how long a disk will survive, but since I was careful with the DVD recorder I choose and the DVDs I picked, the odds were favourable and almost all of my disks still work.
So my question is: if I pick the right recorder, the right disks, and reasonable storage conditions, what kind of longevity and durability am I looking at? 3 years? 5 years? 7? 10?
I want to set my expectations right.