I was of the opinion that the reliability of the storage medium does not matter much for backup purposes, so long as it's reliable enough to survive the days be

I was of the opinion that the reliability of the storage medium does not matter much for backup purposes, so long as it's reliable enough to survive the days between a failure of another copy and the rebuilding of that. But you've convinced me that it's not a blanket statement one can make, due to silent data corruption. Even with systems that have checksumming, you're right that I'm not doing a full data read on my restic backup regularly. I guess it can still be an option to use regular USB sticks, given the right software and discipline to run its checks, but at that point, it's probably easier to use a more suitable storage medium, especially since HDDs are the cheapest option per GB. (Not that I personally use USB sticks for backup currently, but I do repurpose old hardware for things like my email server.) Thanks!