385TB Myrient preserved
The 385TB Myrient archive — ROMs, ISOs, prototypes and more across hundreds of systems — was fully mirrored and community‑validated before shutdown, achieving 99.99%+ preservation and now marked 100% complete with torrents incoming []. Retro preservation fans say the mirror ensures long‑term access to rare builds and prototypes that might otherwise vanish [].
The volunteer mirror project called Minerva Archive launched) as a coordinated effort to copy Myrient’s collections onto distributed archival servers. An r/SaveMyrient subreddit spreadsheet organized) hundreds of volunteers who each signed up to back up specific folders and collections from the archive. A dedicated orchestration tool — the minerva-archive/worker on GitHub, which shows active development and community contributions on its repo) — automated downloads and uploads across participants’ machines. Myrient’s own FAQ and site notices set the service shutdown date as 31 March 2026 on the Myrient site), which triggered the rush to preserve content. The archive operator publicly cited monthly operating losses of roughly $6,000 reported) and pointed to rising RAM and storage prices tied to AI datacenter demand plus abusive download-manager traffic as major factors explained). Internet Archive–adjacent preservation voices engaged with the Minerva community, and archivist Jason Scott warned that indiscriminate bulk uploads could create "harm" without metadata work — conversations on handling the data responsibly were reported during Minerva’s Discord Q&A covered).
