[tombert]

This is giving me some anxiety about my tape backups.

I have backed up my blu-ray collection to a dozen or so LTO-6 tapes, and it's worked great, but I have no idea how long the drives are going to last for, and how easy it will be to repair them either.

Granted, the LTO format is probably one of the more popular formats, but articles like this still keep me up at night.

[EvanAnderson]

The only surefire method to keep the bits readable is to continue moving them onto new media every few years. Data has a built-in recurring cost. I'd love to see a solution to that problem but I think it's unlikely. It's a least possible, though, that we'll come up with a storage medium with sufficient density and durability that'll it'll be good enough.

I don't even want to think about the hairy issues associated with keeping the bits able to be interpreted. That's a human behavior problem more than a technology problem.

[antod]

LTO is one of the best choices for compatibility. I remember just how awful DDS (same sort of media as DAT) tape backups were - due to differences in head alignments, it was a real lottery as to whether any given tape could be read on a different drive than the one that wrote it.

[bombcar]

Do test restores. LTO is very good but without verification some will fail at some point.

But your original bluray disk are also a backup.

[wazoox]

LTO-7 drives read LTO-6, and will be available for quite a while.

In 2016 I've used an LTO-3 drive to restore a bunch (150 or 200) of LTO-1/2 tapes from 2000-2003, and almost all but one or two worked fine.