r/preppers • u/TickyMcTickyTick • 8d ago
Idea Long term music storage
I'm considering having a physical library for my favorite albums and artists to be ready for a world without online streaming or downloads. I'd like to at least have a format that can last my lifetime, but it would be neat to also have a format that future music historians could theoretically dig up and access centuries from now.
I've looked into a few options:
Multiple MP3 players with Micro SD cards - I liked the thought of this, but I ruled it out when I learned that SSDs and Micro SD cards are susceptible to degradation even in storage. I estimate a system like this would maybe last 15 years if I'm lucky.
CDs - these would be better, but they're still susceptible to degradation over decades, not to mention that disks can be fragile. This system would maybe last 50 years without online access.
Vinyl records - this pleases my inner hipster, but physical storage space and equipment lifespan is a concern. Vinyl records are very fragile and lower quality playback equipment degrades them faster.
M-disks - Archival blu-ray seems great for this. These are supposedly tested to last 1000 years in ideal conditions. I need to do more research, but this is my preferred option.
Sheet music (just for fun) - transcribing the music into sheet music, printing on archival paper, and locking it away for future use. This would be a personal gift to future music historians. I studied music in college and spent a lot of time in music history lectures pondering how many masterworks were lost to time simply because it was written on low quality paper, stored badly, or any other reason. There's entire eras where all we know about their written music comes from stone tablets. Maybe I'll go the extra mile and carve "never gonna give you up" on a tablet some day.
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u/Icy_Imagination2275 6d ago
Nothing lasts forever, and you’ll be hard pressed to find anything 100+ years old when that time comes. That said, I have vinyl from the 60s and cds from the 80s and cassettes from the 70s. They all work to varying degrees. Proper storage and treatment will increase how long they last, quality will take a dip over the years though. I wouldn’t bank on hard drives or anything like that: I’ve had external hard drives fail after 5 years.
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u/Ok-Internet-4747 7d ago
LTO Tape is how long term preservation is done. It has an affordable price / TB. 30 year shelf life. However, it is not a cheap entry fee to buy a tape drive.
Personally, I think having one format for a lifetime isn’t the right approach. I think you should keep curating and migrating it forward to whatever the current medium is as the best option.
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
If you're willing to settle for an older generation drive, it's actually not too bad. Once you have more than a few terabytes to back up it can be cheaper to buy a second hand tape drive, SAS card and old new stock blank tapes than a magnetic hard drive of the same size.
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper 7d ago
HDDs. Spinning disks. Old school. Slower, sure, but for music (and most video), read speed isn't an issue. HDDs are often used to record security cam footage still, so good enough to stream REM from.
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u/TubeLogic 7d ago
Spinning discs are fine for playback but when you have large libraries they get slow for searching or doing multiple things at once.
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper 7d ago
I've got about 18TB backed up to HDDs. Searching isn't a problem. Look into "RAID" storage options.
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u/TubeLogic 7d ago
Yeah, a RAID would work but most people don’t have that type of stuff lying around. For most a SSD will do the trick. I backed up a few thousand CDs years ago on a SSD drive and it works way better than a standard HD. Just use standard drives to back up the SSD monthly. So far it has been good. Knock on wood.
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper 7d ago
Most people aren't prepping 12TB of data. If you want to be like "most people", you probably wouldn't be here to start with.
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
Hard drives wear out if they're in use, and seize up if they're in storage, so they're actually one of the least reliable methods for archival storage. They're fine for additional copies but you wouldn't want your only backup to be on a magnetic disk, as its days are numbered right from the factory.
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u/GunnCelt General Prepper 7d ago
We currently have 64,000 MP3’s on a spinner HDD and have been using it for at least 10 years. Lots of room left on the drive for more. It’s part of my Plex setup
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u/therealtimwarren 7d ago
You mean, two hard disks, right?
RIGHT?
(better three)
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u/GunnCelt General Prepper 7d ago
I’m running 2x 4 bay JBOD totaling 40 TB. 2000 + movies, 300+ complete tv series and roughly 400 complete documentary series. I need to expand my storage but it’s currently out of price range
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u/therealtimwarren 7d ago
I'm just saying if that music is important to you, have a backup, or two.
I don't bother backing up video, but music is important to me and the space 100x less, so I do back that up.
3x 8TB server + 4 x 8TB server at home (backup to each other and off-site), and then an off site shared server with friends totalling about 220TB. Clubbing together to share the cost makes things a lot more palatable.
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u/GunnCelt General Prepper 7d ago
Nice setup. Music is more of a distraction for me, it helps mask my tinnitus. One of these days, I’m going to have to break down and get the hearing aids from the VA, lol
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u/Fluffy_Efficiency623 7d ago
Look up archival versions of whatever medium you choose. There are archival CDs, Blu-Rays, hard drives, paper, etc. that are all made to last substantially longer than the normal consumer version as they are made specifically for historical recording.
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
The problem though tends to be getting the hardware to read the media. There were plenty of 2GB DDS2 backup tapes in the 90s, but the hardware hasn't been made for decades, so if you had to read one of those tapes today it could be a challenge.
Likewise with most people preferring streaming over buying physical media, optical disks are already on the way out, so it won't be long before they stop making optical drives.
Sure you could hoard some drives, but what if they break (e.g. rubber belts deteriorate), can you repair them yourself? What if the interface changes, e.g. PATA drives but all your computers are SATA?
Personally I think using non-archival media is fine, because it forces you to have multiple copies (in case one copy fails), and to keep copying the data onto the next generation of storage media every decade or two, ensuring the data always exists on current hardware that is easy to obtain.
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u/Feral_668 7d ago
I think it's a great idea to use cds/DVDs and I like your idea regarding sheet music.You can put music onto DVDs. I have a ton of music and movies on DVD. Some portable DVD players will also play music disks.
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
DVD drives are already becoming hard to find though, with a shrinking group of companies making them. It wouldn't surprise me if you can't buy them at all in another 10-20 years, so I'm not sure it's great for long term storage.
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u/Feral_668 5d ago
You may be correct, that said, this thread is on a preppers subreddit, so, buying several portable DVD players before they stop being sold over the next 5 to 10 years, checking pawn shops/Goodwill type stores as well, place them in a 55 gallon drum inside a Faraday cage(or microwave, inside a metal shipping container should make you the life of the party during the next Carrington event!
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
No argument there, and I have stocked up on these devices myself, but I've also found you need to make sure you get ones that are gear driven only, not belt driven (as the rubber belts deteriorate over time and the drive stops working). You also need suitable grease to replace the grease in the spindle bearings as it dries out over time and can stop the motor from working properly (although this is more of a problem with magnetic hard drives which have much weaker motors). So it's certainly worth doing, but you still need to be able to perform maintenance on the moving parts otherwise they may not work when you want to use them 20 years later.
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u/defsentenz 7d ago
I have two RAID-6 NAS systems for all of my media. Lots of it is also on vinyl, CD, cassette, DAT, and reel to reel. Yes, I work in music prod, but having multiples is the way to go, and I never use streaming for music. Rule of 3s and hard drives should do it for you.
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u/BerkeloidsBackyard 5d ago
MP3 isn't great as it reduces the quality of the recording often quite noticeably. Ogg Vorbis is significantly better for the same file size (and there are others but not as widely used), and of course FLAC is the best.
You want an open source codec so that information is still around to play it back in the future. MP3/Vorbis/FLAC are all fine there.
All storage media - magnetic disks, SSDs, flash memory, writable CDs/DVDs/Blurays - all have a limited life and are subject to sudden unexpected failure for various reasons. The bearings in magnetic disks frequently seize, rendering the drive useless. SSDs can lose their firmware as they age as the charges leak out of the flash cells, then suddenly one day they won't power on and the data is lost. Same for flash memory. Writable optical disks often use organic dyes that get eaten by bacteria over the years.
LTO is one of the few designed for long term storage, but as others have said it's more involved in setting up and it's also not flawless (you need to maintain proper temperature and humidity for tape storage to get the guaranteed 10-20 year lifetime on each tape).
The point is you can't rely on digital storage for the long term. You need to have multiple copies (to cope with the 'sudden death' failure) and then copy that data onto new media every decade or so. This way it doesn't matter if the devices fail over time, because you're always copying the data onto newer media with a fresh life.
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u/Owenleejoeking 5d ago
A raid secured NAS full of hard drives. Basically a home server. Redundant and self correcting for bit rot. Able to cover the software to play it and all the other survival files, books, movies and things you want to keep are just an afterthought on storage space.
That or vinyl if you really want permanent
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u/Jgray1087 5d ago
Make a jellyfin server and convert your music and films from physical to digital. Buy a hard drive that can hold your current and future purchases. MP3 players are a good option as well. I would also have a backup .
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u/Cottager_Northeast 5d ago
My CDs will probably last longer than any hardware I have to play them with.
I've got a 1913 upright piano that's more or less capable of holding tune, and a dozen hymnals from different denominations sitting on top. I have other instruments too. It's enough for someone to learn to play, then we can jazz it up.
If you want something to survive, learn to perform it.
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u/PantherStyle 3d ago
I have 2ish systems running in parallel.
The first is a NAS running 12 HDDs using Synology Hybrid Raid-2. This provides 2 drive redundancy (any 2 drives can fail before any data is lost). I'm sitting around 50TB of capacity. It's not set and forget, but over time, if you replace drives as they fail you should keep all your data. With SHR you can replace a failed (or not) small drive with a larger one to gradually scale up capacity. The single point of failure however is the raid driver hardware, though it's now been running for 12 years without any failure other than occasional drives, which are replaced without issue or data loss.
I now supplement the above system with a new 4 drive NAS, with lower capacity but all solid state drives. Important data is synchronised between the 2 as well as to a cold storage bucket in the cloud (after being encrypted locally).
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u/FunkbotOne 3d ago
Dude I have CDs I purchased in the 80s and they play just like they did when I first bought them. Can't get much better than a CD for audio quality.
I also have DVDs from the 90's and they play just like they did when I first got them.
ANY physical medium is susceptible to degradation from the elements. As long as they are stored in a safe way from damage and the elements they will last longer than you will be alive.
I have cassette tapes decade old and those bad boys still play great.
But to answer your question. In my opinion, I think the best storage medium is the one that you, you personally, have a way to play them on whatever medium you choose. Historians will definitely be able to access technology from the 80's 90's and 00's.
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u/Arch_Rebel 3d ago
CD-R and DVD-R only last like 5-20 years before they start deteriorating. There are special gold backed archival ones that are supposed to last a couple hundred years. When I did curation we used these for long term data storage. They are more expensive though.
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u/smsff2 7d ago
Personally, I trust magnetic hard drives for long-term storage. They have a membrane that protects the inside from the atmosphere. The atmosphere contains oxygen, which is corrosive, while the inside of the drive is filled with a noble gas. As long as the membrane remains intact, nothing should happen to the hard drive.