It would be absolutely insane to compress all of the data into a single file to backup to a single drive. If any part of that drive were to go bad, the entire compressed archive could be lost. Drives go bad and often you won’t know they’ve gone bad until you try to get data from them.

If, and I stress, if you’re going to compress your data, you need to compress every file individually. This way if a part of the hard drive goes bad you’re only risking the few compressed files that reside in that part. Much better to lose 50 photos than 5000 photos.

I’m sure that some archive formats are better than others at disaster recovery, but it probably isn’t worth the risk. Also, remember that in addition to backing up the actual bits you need to keep track of what formats you archive too. RAW importers change all the time, so it is possible the file you saved in RAW in 2003 might not be readable in 2023. The best solution is as open a format as you can find that supports whatever functionality you need. I think Adobe DNG has been released as an open format specification, but I am not sure on that. This especially applies to the newer non-destructive editing apps like Aperture from Apple. If you tweak the settings in Aperture and never create a hard(er) copy of the file, what happens if Aperture stops working in the future?

And finally, be sure you can plug your drives in physically in the long run. This mostly applies to long term storage but definitely includes your optical disks as well. Jaz drives were really popular and I just saw Steve Wozniak post on Twitter that he needed a Jaz to Zip transfer service. Some technologies just don’t last forever.

Paranoia is a key element of a strategy but vigilant verification and maintenance is also important. You need to keep updating everything as you go to make sure it stays accessible in the long run.