SSDs are vulnerable to bit rot. I recommend multiple copies on spinning disk at a minimum. For photos of historical family significance, consider uploading to familysearch.org as part of a family tree; this system is maintained by the LDS Church (Mormons) with a billion dollar trust contributing to their technology apparatus. Their longevity is likely longer than personal systems. M-DISC sounds reasonable for the use case but there is some concern about media authenticity [1] [2]; ensure you keep extra drives in inventory and have a media verification schedule. LTO tape might be better if you can find a used tape drive at a reasonable price [3].

I maintain a Dropbox account, Apple Shared Albums, and a private Peertube instance for sharing this media. Instructions for care and feeding are part of my death package for the next custodian to continue operations. Remember you’ll have to hand this off to someone in the future for archive continuity.

I cannot speak to scanning, I outsourced this due to volume; CharterOak Digital out of Stonington, Connecticut is a vendor I can recommend, as well as ScanCafe [ScanDigital now] out of Carmel, Indiana; no affiliation with either. Do not destroy or dispose of the original media or artifacts post digitization if at all possible; keep those stored somewhere safe as physical backups of last resort. This is how the Internet Archive operates, and so I believe it to be a best practice.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239553

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/yu4j1u/psa_ver...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/HardwareLoan/comments/eoeuax/lto_ta...

Additional potentially useful resources:

https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/publications/managing-...

https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/archives/archi...

https://files.archivists.org/groups/museum/standards/4.%20Ar...

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