I don’t know who needs to hear this but 128GB BD-R XL M-DISC is SOTA for consumer-available archival optical storage (for backing up your models)

If you’re trying to download and preserve your local LLMs in case of future availability issues due to AI-related politics, your best bet is either 128gb or 100gb Blu-Ray optical disks, more specifically BD-R XL M-DISC standard format which are archival-grade and built to last for like 10 of our lifetimes.

And yes, cheap USB thumb drives are the other option, but they are considered volatile storage and could be affected by static discharge and other electrical issues.

So if you’re worried about preserving your favorite models long term, maybe pick up a Blu-Ray burner. You can get them for around $100 -$250. Blank Blu-Ray disk prices for 100gb to 128gb disks vary wildly depending on quantity and quality. 128gb average around $12-$14 per disk. 100gb can be found for about $7 -$10.

There hasn’t been a huge demand for the blank disks until recently because hard drive and memory prices used to be much lower. Given this fact, expect low stock on the blanks for a while most likely. Hopefully companies will ramp up production of the blank disks as demand from data hoarding folks like us increases.

The Best commonly available BD-R XL capable burner compatible with high capacity M-DISK that I’ve found so far is the:

ASUS 16D1X-U
https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/optical-drives/external-blu-ray-drive/bw-16d1x-u/

But there are tons of other great drives out there from Buffalo, LG, and others for as cheap as $80 for a lower-speed external drive.

As far as the blank media goes, look for the 128gb and 100gb blank BD-R XL disks from Verbatim and Ritek, expect to pay a premium for the M-DISC version that is built to last longer than the standard version. M-DISC is not a must have, but it’s the highest archival quality version available to consumers right now.

It sucks that current world events have driven us into becoming AI model archivists, but if we don’t do it, then I don’t know who else will. The best LLM is the one you have access to when the shit hits the fan. LFG back up some models!