We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
Buy a brandname M.2 SSD in low capacity variant and put it in an external case. A bit bigger then a thumbstick, but not as big as an 2,5hdd. If the casing fails (breaking of the usb port for example) you can switch the drive to another case or put it internal in a pc.
A bit more pricey solution, but usb thumbdrives get mostly the lowest quality flash chips.
so an icy box IB-1817M-C31 case is around 30€, add an 128 or 256 gb m2 nvme SSD for around 20€.
Corsair Flash Voyager drives. You can play tennis with them and then dive into the Mariana trench with them around your neck if you wish.
A 3.2TB optane drive overprovisioned down to 16GB? ~$5.5k lol
One point of failure, and not super portable. But I appreciate the thought!
One point of failure
And a USB isn't?
and not super portable
Realistically though, an external SSD is probably a better bet overall than a USB. Decent enclosure costs ~$60 plus the cost of whatever ssd you put in it. You said best, so optane is still pretty high up on that list
I'd need to buy two. I said money isn't an issue but scaling down a 3.2tb drive to 16gb seems a bit ridiculous. Wouldn't that money be better spent on an enclosure? Reason I asked for USB is because I can easily fit them in small storage places and can fit in my pocket.
I follow the idea. Two is one and one is none. Buy three flash drives and copy your data onto all three. Flash drives are fairly cheap and if you end up losing one due to failure or other reasons, buy a new drive locally and copy your data on it. Are you going on a safari or something?
I think i'm going to go with two Corsair voyager gt's as mentioned in another comment and two sandisk extreme pros in a pelican case at two locations (one of each type at two locations).
Barring an act of god, that should be sufficient.
Thanks!
Buy an Optane 118G NVMe and put it in a waterproof USB enclosure. Search on Sargent rugged waterproof enclosure.