Recently, I've been thinking pretty hard about how to archive data. Optical media is out, due to my (possibly irrational?) fear of disc rot. HDDs just break with extended use, SSDs have been known to die with either overuse or just existing for an extended period of time. What's left?

I have heard of tape (of some kind) being used for backup in some bigger operations, but with my experieces with VHS, and to a lesser extent, cassettes, they seem to be very susceptible to mould.

Any suggestions?

I'm talking about this 2 TB LaCie Portable SSD and this Samsung T7 2 TB SSD. They both have the same ~1 GB/s read-write speed, the same 3-year limited warranty, and the same USB 3.2 Gen2 connector. But the LaCie drive is $369, while the Samsung drive is $130.
Am I missing something? Or is it just luxury tax?

I recently had an SSD fail on me, less than a year old. Nothing important was on it and I'll be getting a warranty replacement, but this got me thinking - I still don't have a proper backup strategy. If my boot drive failed with most of my documents on it, that'd be lost or be expensive to recover.

What do you do to back up your data? What do you recommend others do? We have things like cloud backups, disks that act as a full backup and a whole lot more. Personally, I want to be able to set something up and not worry about it going wrong.