I've been through 8mm Exabyte tape, 4mm DAT tape, Sony AIT tape, and a couple of generations of LTO. I kept a pair of drives for each format, all using SCSI, and had suitable SCSI adaptors to drive them, and formated the recorded data using standard Open Source software with no compression or encryption. Every year, I'd read each tape, just to re-tension it, and try to avoid print-through, etc.
It was a massive effort. So, I no longer do that.
I now just keep everything on my NAS. The volumes are mirrored. I have a removable HDD onto which I snapshot the entire NAS volume every night. I swap that drive out every month and send it off-site (and replace it with the one previously off-site). So I have live, local snapshot (up to 24 hours out-of-date), and off-site snapshot (up to 1 month out of date).
Everything I care about is rsync-ed daily to the NAS: home directories, photos, music, Time Machine laptop backups, machine configs, IMAP sync, CalDAV sync, CardDAV, Git repo clones, etc.
Every few years, I double the size of the NAS volume.
There's no monthly cost, and there's no concern about degradation of the media. The storage format is always current, as are the OS and tools required to read it. The only effort is the monthly off-site drive swap.
It won't outlive me, unless my heirs decide to continue to maintain it, but ... at that point I no longer care.
It was a massive effort. So, I no longer do that.
I now just keep everything on my NAS. The volumes are mirrored. I have a removable HDD onto which I snapshot the entire NAS volume every night. I swap that drive out every month and send it off-site (and replace it with the one previously off-site). So I have live, local snapshot (up to 24 hours out-of-date), and off-site snapshot (up to 1 month out of date).
Everything I care about is rsync-ed daily to the NAS: home directories, photos, music, Time Machine laptop backups, machine configs, IMAP sync, CalDAV sync, CardDAV, Git repo clones, etc.
Every few years, I double the size of the NAS volume.
There's no monthly cost, and there's no concern about degradation of the media. The storage format is always current, as are the OS and tools required to read it. The only effort is the monthly off-site drive swap.
It won't outlive me, unless my heirs decide to continue to maintain it, but ... at that point I no longer care.