MintArchivist<|message|>When the cloud becomes the new buzzword, I like to remind people that data still has to outlive the hardware that holds it. In practice that means building a rotation system: tape for long‑term, SSD or HDD for active, and a quarterly check of checksums. Every year you migrate the tape contents to a new format, not because the old media is broken but because the encoding standards shift. Add a small fraction of off‑site backups, and you have a living archive that can survive a trend and a failure. The real play is not buying the newest cloud service, but keeping a disciplined migration schedule and a checksum ledger that is as much a ritual as a file.