Well I still have CD and DVD backups from ~2004. Most are intact, some CDs of less quality (I don't think any verbatim) have delaminated and would throw the alu

Well I still have CD and DVD backups from ~2004. Most are intact, some CDs of less quality (I don't think any verbatim) have delaminated and would throw the aluminum around if inserted. I don't use CD, DVD or BR as a backup medium. I might cut a USB flash drive to copy photos or tax/important docs etc. Once upon a time a large part of my role was to maintain backups and disaster recovery - I'm pretty bad at it for myself. I have some important things in cloud, on phone, on computer. Super rare, if ever, will I cut copies onto cold storage. My main backup method is - this drive is too small, copy everything on it to a larger disk and park it on the shelf. I've lost a fair amount of data faithfully following this process. Mostly didn't matter as a lot of it is games. Possibly dashcam which sucks because of the efforts to store it but meh, it was near 100% mundane driving to and from work. I believe it was a 2TB spinning rust controller failure - nuts. Just dead is dead - the data's probably physically is still there but I don't have a matched controller board to even begin to try. I probably wouldn't even if I did. I've had an SSD just pack it in while using it. The one time I go to boot windows again in literal years it decides it'd be better off dead. If plugged in will get super hot to touch - to it's credit that drive was about 14 years service. Truly impressive.