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My take is that the classic view of online and offline storage, where one uses something like tape or now CD for backup and archival storage, is the wrong way to look at it.

Hard disk drives keep growing fast enough, and their per-bit cost coming down fast enough, that one should instead keep all data, all versions of all files that anyone might ever care about, on ones disk drive, forever.

Offline storage still has its uses, for disaster recover and for data transportation. But don't use it instead of online storage (don't put your only copy of some useful data on a CD), and don't use it for versioning (keeping track of old versions of stuff.)

I've got stuff dating back 12 years right on my disk in front of me, including from the times I ran DOS, 4DOS, Windows 3.1, OS/2 Warp and some early Linux boots.

Every year or two, I buy a new disk, much bigger than the previous one, and copy it all over, under some folder called "old" or some such.

Then I use removable disks (used to be tape, but now disks are cheaper per bit) for backups, so I always have a few full and recent backups, in different locations.

I've got some old tape, disk, floppy and CD backups, but they are useless. Old stale, unsearchable stuff on media that I probably can't even read anymore. I should throw them out.