Why does LTO tape require scheduled migration if the media lasts 30 years?

LTO tape drives only maintain read compatibility with their own generation and the preceding one, necessitating drive hardware and cartridge upgrades roughly every 10 to 12 years.

How does unpowered SSD storage compare to optical media for cold archival?

According to JEDEC JESD218 standards, client SSDs left unpowered on a shelf retain data for approximately one year at 30 °C, making them unsuitable for cold storage compared to inorganic optical media like M-DISC or BD-R HTL.

How is bit-rot risk accounted for across physical media?

The planner assigns full-read verification schedules based on published unrecoverable read error rates, which is the primary operational defence against silent data corruption.

What is the key cost tradeoff between S3 Glacier Deep Archive and Backblaze B2?

S3 Glacier Deep Archive provides very low monthly storage rates but charges substantial retrieval fees with multi-hour restore delays, whereas Backblaze B2 has a slightly higher base storage cost but offers free egress up to 3× stored data.

What criteria determines compliance in the 3-2-1 gap report?

The audit checks whether your stack maintains at least three total copies across at least two distinct media types, with at least one copy stored offsite or in the cloud.

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Backup Media Decade-by-Decade Verify-and-Restore Planner

Score your backup stack (CD-R, BD-R, M-Disc, LTO tape, HDD, SSD, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, Backblaze B2) across 5/10/25/50-year horizons: media life bands, drive-generation traps, bit-rot math, TCO and a 3-2-1 gap report.

Details

What this tool helps you do

Pick what your archive lives on today and how far out you need it readable. Every medium gets a life band at your horizon from anchored ratings: M-DISC’s several-hundred-year ISO/IEC 10995 accelerated-aging rating, BD-R HTL’s inorganic layer, the 10-year organic-dye lottery of CD/DVD-R, LTO’s 30-year cartridges — with the trap that an LTO drive reads only its own and the previous generation, so tape demands a migration roughly every 12 years regardless of media health — HDDs at 1.4–2 % annualized failure, and the JEDEC JESD218 truth that a client SSD unpowered on a shelf retains data about one year at 30 °C. Cloud tiers are scored on cost mechanics instead of decay: S3 Glacier Deep Archive at $0.00099/GB-month with $0.02/GB and ~12-hour retrievals versus Backblaze B2 at $6.95/TB-month with free egress up to 3× storage — cheap to store versus cheap to restore. The plan includes per-medium full-read verify cadences (the only real bit-rot defence), expected unrecoverable-read errors per full pass where published rates exist, hardware costs, migration-event costs across the horizon, and a 3-2-1 gap analysis telling you exactly which leg of three-copies / two-media / one-offsite you are missing.

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Backup Media Decade-by-Decade Verify-and-Restore Planner

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1. Family Archive Strategy Assessment

2. Long-Term Enterprise Cold Storage Architecture

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