Just to repeat what others have said, Flash-based drives are not reliable for long term storage.
That especially goes for those little USB memory sticks. Those things SUCK for any kind of long term storage. You never know when they're going to get corrupted.
Last summer I got pretty peeved after spending $30 or so on a 128GB SanDisc USB 3.0 memory stick. It was supposed to work great but started to fail after only a couple months of use. I copied a bunch of music albums I converted from CD-quality LPCM WAV to high bit rate MP3 to play in my new pickup truck. I also used the same memory stick to occasionally move media files from my computer to play in other devices, such as a TV or just use the "sneaker network" to move some data from a work PC to a notebook at home. Nothing too heavy or demanding. Yet the stick failed in little time at all. Thankfully nothing on the memory stick was unique; all files were copies of data on drives elsewhere.
No storage medium is bullet proof. Data that is precious needs to be copied to more than one physical hard disc and/or at least one volume that is off site. If the shop is burned down in a fire or destroyed by something else the computers and data on site might be destroyed with it.
G-Rex said:
The best way to archive data is to use M-Discs. They are more cost efficient and reliable than any other option.
They have a Blu-ray version that can hold 25GB 50GB or 100GB. Lasts for 1000 years.
That 1000 year claim is a bunch of hype.
M-Discs are made to be more reliable than standard recordable BD/DVD media. But the issue of weakness is not so much in the discs themselves as it is the drives and technology that read them. Not all optical drives will read discs wrote by M-Disc burners. Millenniata, the company that launched M-Disc technology, went bankrupt in 2016. In order for M-Discs to continue to be readable companies that make optical disc drives need to support the technology. And the drives have to be supported by computer operating systems. There is zero guarantee for that to happen.
The worrying trend is many new computers, notebooks in particular, are no longer being sold with optical disc drives. Just looking back the previous 25 years a number of different storage mediums for computers and audio-video use have come and gone. How many people can still pull data off an old 1.44MB floppy disc? Or an Iomega Zip Disc? Those were popular 20 years ago, but not so much now. Earlier this year Samsung announced it was going to stop making 4K UHD Blu-ray players. Other manufacturers have been cutting the number of DVD and Blu-ray players they've been making in response to the trend of movie streaming.
People are dumping collections of VHS tapes and dead VHS players into landfills. My Dad got rid of an old D-VHS player recently, along with a collection of "D-Theater" HD movies. I've lost some old store-bought DVDs due to "laser rot" -the glue holding the 2 data layers together starts breaking down. One of my Aunts had a big collection of RCA SelectaVision discs and 2 players she bought in the early 1980's. The players stopped working in the 1990's. All that stuff eventually went into the landfill.