My lab is in the process of setting up a small server that holds data (mostly video and image data, plus a few documents) for the project our group is working on at a moment in time. Historically, after a research project ends, the data haphazardly ends up being archived in one hard drive, or a big pile of DVDs (or CDs in the olden days), and/or some of the video ended up in Sony DV cassettes or even VHS tapes (this lab has been active since the early '90s), OR a mixture of all the above...

Question: What is the best way for (1) consolidating them ALL into the same format AND storage medium, and (2) what's the best medium for long term archiving of such data for very occasional access (say, 30+ years?)? Unfortunately we don't have enterprise level budget (we are just a ~10 people lab), so can't do things that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Thanks!

P.S. Considering our old video and images are of smaller resolution, but recent ones are huge, I think we are talking about 30~40 TB for the really old data, another 10~20 TB for recent data, then yearly additions of about 5 TB.