I've gone through some of the earlier topics about this, but I would like a straight answer for my particular issue. I think it's super important to store games on physical media, and it's kind of the purpose for GOG for me, that I own them and will be able to back them up infinitely to play my games for the rest of my life.

I have two questions:
1. Is a USB flash drive an acceptable place to back up games (e.g. setups and files)? My primary concern is the durability, whether it will be safe and last for years.
2. Similarly, is an SD card a good place to store games? Again my concerns are whether it's durable, safe, and long-lasting.

Right now I am going through the menial task of backing up files, and I've filled over half of my 32 GB flash drive. I haven't made it through half my games yet, so I'm guessing I'll need more storage. Considering whether to go with 64 GB, 128 GB, or 256 GB. Then there's the reality that I should probably back up on two or more physical devices just in case.

Since I'm a bit of a newb to this, and I'm not certain I'm doing this right, I'd like some advice to help me out before I buy more stuff to store them. My purchases at the moment don't necessitate 256 GB or maybe not even 128 GB, but I do have other stuff I want to store alongside my games that could put that extra space to use.

Apparently you don't have that many games if they fit into an USB drive? Is there some specific reason you wouldn't just back up them to a hard drive, either the one you use on your PC, or e.g. an external USB hard drive?

I can't really tell how durable e.g. USB flash memory sticks are for long time storage. My understanding has been that at least they shouldn't be used for continuous rewrites (like I once ran a whole Linux installation from an USB flash drive, I guess it was not recommended).

I personally don't think that much how long the backup media will last, because I tend to move all the data I have to newer hard drives or media once in a while anyway. So it isn't like that if I download my GOG games now to a certain hard drive, I will keep them there for the rest of my life. No, they will move to new hard drives etc. once in a while.

Also, might I suggest you check out e.g. the gogrepo tool? It takes some learning to set it up and use it, but it is very easy to download all your GOG game installers (and extras) with it, and also to keep them up to date later. More important if you have lots of games.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogrepopy_python_script_for_regularly_backing_up_your_purchased_gog_collection_for_full_offline_e/page1

As for about keeping your GOG installers on several drives... while I do also download all my GOG game installers (with gogrepo), for now I just keep them in one place, one hard drive. As long as GOG seems healthy, I consider the GOG servers as my backup. If I ever started thinking that might change, then I'd start keeping a second (or third, or whatever) local backups of my GOG games.

On the other hand, since e.g. DotEmu closed their store and downloads, the games I have downloaded from there, I keep on two or three different hard drives, since I know I will not be able to redownload them from DotEmu anymore, ever, ever never ever.

One more thing, for local files of anything that you want to archive (be it your family photos/videos, GOG games, whatever), certainly you want some means to check whether they are all ok. For that you can use utilities like rhash or dvdsig, meaning that you can later check if all your archived files are still ok. Of course if your archived files are compressed (zip, 7z, rar, whatever), you can test their integrity at any time with normal compression tools. Same goes to iso files.

gogrepo also has such verification option for GOG game installers.

Just buy 2 traditional external portable hard disk (1TB is enough and it's also cheap). One backup is not safe and USB stick and SD cards are not good place to store games (they cost lot's of money for small GB and they are stil not reliable like traditional hard disk). If you really want a fast disk you can even use a standard SSD, but not a usb stick or a SD card.

Timppu they make thumb drives that hold multiple terabytes........Thats alot of games.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Description=1%20terabyte%20flash%20drive&Submit=ENE

To answer the question for the OP, yes thumb drives, SSD's are acceptable methods. Just consider having two backups if your paranoid. Thats what I do.

Buy a USB hard drive instead of using USB sticks. The hard drive will probably last longer even if treated exactly the same, and it's much easier to treat a hard drive well (you're not likely to throw it in your pocket or grab it as the first thing to hand when you need to copy a file for later). It'll also be cheaper than using USB sticks or SD cards.

If you want to *run your games* from a USB hard drive or USB stick, then go searching with the game name and the phrase "portable install" to see what needs to be done. On a case-by-case basis, you often need to do a little manual tweaking but you can usually run most games from removable media if you want to.

I wouldn't store anything important on a USB flash drive for long. I already had one get corrupted so I can't read the data on it anymore, although I don't know anyone who treats them with more care and caution than me. They are suited for transferring data, not for keeping backups, I would think.

Specifically for your questions:

http://www.flashbay.com/blog/usb-life-expectancy

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hard-drives-ssds-flash-drives-how-long-will-your-storage-media-last/

Maybe those give you the idea. The second link talks both about long time usage (e.g. you keep writing constantly to the media), and also if you just put it into cupboard for a long time. From the first link I got the impression that if you take an USB flash drive or an SD card and put it away, the data in it will stay for a long time. But if you keep rewriting to them continously, then they will wear down. So it appears flash drives may be ok for long time storage, but then they don't have that much space.

Anyway as I said, at least in my use I tend to move files important to me to newer devices (hard drives) every few years anyway, so I am not expecting one certain piece of storage medium to last for me for decades to come. That's what I like about DRM-free digital files: it is so easy to move them to newer and bigger storage media. I have a couple of decades old personal files and also games that I remember originally backing up into 3.5" floppy discs, then moving them to ZIP drives, then maybe to CD-R or DVD-R discs, and after that keeping them on various hard drives which have become bigger and bigger over time. The media has changed, the files have remained intact (as long as there is some way for me to check once in a while that their integrity is still ok, hence utilities like rhash or dvdsig). Sure, if you are willing to pay $1500 for one... :) My biggest thumb drive is 128GB, and my GOG game collection (counting only English Windows versions + extras) is already something like 2.2 terabytes, so I personally need a 3 TB or bigger hard drive to keep them all (or have them spread on several devices).

Anyway it seems the OP has much less games so he can do with smaller storage devices.

I got the opposite impression from mr Google, ie. that it is the constant rewrites that wear flash drives out, not long time storage. Did you rewrite a lot to that flash drive, or was it fairly new and became corrupted on its own when it was in the storage?

I once ran a whole Linux installation from my 128GB USB memory stick (because the internal HDD on that old laptop fried), but I decided to stop doing that after learning that especially something like that wears the flash drive down fast (having the swap file on it too etc., constantly rewriting to it).

I use standard external HDDs as the cost per GB ratio is better than USB drives or SD cards.
SD cards have those read/write switches (or whatever you call them), if they seem important to you.

I have only a portion of my games here downloaded and backed up, and they are about 170GB. So HDDs are cost efficient option. :)

Hm, good point. I guess if you just copy your backups on it and then don't touch it anymore, it's not as likely to break as if it's in constant use. I actually did use it more for transferring than storing.

A good hdd is the way to go. I started off with physical media, didn't last and takes up space. Then I went to USB hdds. Then to an internal hdd of 4 tb in hot swap bays. Now put all them together in two raid devices plus a large USB offsite hdd. The problem is you start off and things grow. Games, pictures, music, movies, none of which I want to lose. So my advice is do what you can now, but plan for the future, sure you may not want the 5 bay raid with 6tb hdds in right now, but 10 years down the line?

Also, start by being ordered, very ordered. The more strictly you keep track of it all the less work down the line. I have used various things like excel and such like, currently game collector. Set up some sort of db straight off, give an informative file structure, and setup programs to check it - I dump the game collector out to csv and use excel and vb script to run over that data and check the integrity of the file structure. I will build my own db at some point. Don't use excel, it will corrupt or bad sort or something at some point.

Just some tips from someone doing this for decades :o)

M-discs are supposed to last 1,000 years but the maximum capacity is only 100 gigs. One of those discs will cost $20. Also, they're relatively new and so no one actually knows if they'll last 1,000 years. :)

We will find out in 1000 years. :p

First, thank you to everyone for all of your replies! This is helping a LOT. :)

Now, providing more info.

What I'm generally getting from you all is that I should probably get a couple of HDDs to backup everything. Flash drives and SD cards are okay short-term to move stuff around, but not as a long-term solution. Certainly as my library grows there are more durable and cost-effective options.

The only concern I have now is the risk of HDDs failing. Replacing them every 5-10 years would definitely help, but it's just a concern I found searching through the old forum posts. What's your take on it? Is that something to even think about, especially if I have two of them?

On another note, I have no interest in running games from a USB flash drive/SD card. That seems like it would put too much strain on the external hardware.

I do have a good number of games on my GOG account, but they are almost all OLD. That's why a sizeable chunk of my collection can fit on a flash drive; a number of them are small files. I bought them recently because I've been eyeing classic PC gaming for a while, but never been in a position to give it a thorough go. Now I'm grabbing a lot of classics I learned of from a good blogger (like Ultima, Master of Orion, Star Control, etc.). I knew I'd need to back the games up at some point, just haven't given it enough attention till now.

I'm used to console gaming where if I buy it on a cartridge the game will practically last forever. I'd like that same comfort with my PC games. Backing them up appears to be the best way to do this. GOG is awesome, and I have a lot of goodwill with them. However, I will take advantage of their DRM promise to the full extent.

Currently my computer is crap. It's a decade-old laptop that I plan on replacing soonish. Not trusting it as a place to hold my games.


EDIT:
I've Googled around a bit. It seems after 4-5 years, hard drives tend to give out. Then again, if I don't use one or two of them for anything but storage, that number could get even better:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for
https://www.recordnations.com/articles/hard-drive-lifespan/
http://www.pcgamer.com/how-long-do-hard-drives-last/

You can colour me crazy, but I'm starting to think about getting a paid Crashplan account for second tier backup (not just for GOG of course). It's getting ridiculous to have all my personal, games and media files backed up on external HDDs; I already have two sets of one full and one 3/4 full 1Tb drives each, and I have not even backed up all my games yet. Reducing to one set (freeing two drives), would be great to get on with the GOG backup.

I guess you are far from that scenario, but I just had to tell someone :P

--- EDIT ---

I guess I should add some actual input for your situation: If your old games are mostly for DOS, you can reduce the size even further by backing up a compressed clean installation, after removing DOSBox, instead of the full GOG installer. You can set up a single DOSBox install for all games: I use D-Fend Reloaded to make it easier.