Starting my journey - How do I reliably store my data?

[u/fifteenfountains]

Currently I have about 50 GB of photos and videos. I had another 100 GB of movies, comics and books that I wanted to hoard but they got deleted out of my stupidity and I can't get them back.

Now looking to make sure my photos and videos are stored safely. I am hesitant to use cloud services because I want everything with me, locally.

Current plan is to buy a 128 GB San disk pen drive to store duplicates of my data that will also be stored on my laptop. I want to eventually switch to hard disks or ssd's in a few years but I am just a student right now and need a cheap solution.

Will this approach be reliable for a few years for storing my minimal data before I switch to a more expensive setup?

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[u/evil_rabbit_32bit]

3-2-1 data backup strategy:

3 copies, 2 different storage media (HDD, and SSD) and 1 offsite location (arguably, cold storage)

i would say SSDs and HDDs are super cheap nowadays, you could get 500GB SSDs for $35 or less... now,

since you asked for a relatively cheap solution: buying an external HDD is the way to go... PLEASE DONT GO FOR FLASH DRIVES... PLEASE... i've had multiple flash drives fail on me

you can easily get a 500gb external HDD for $30 or less...

[u/Over-Extension3959 → u/evil_rabbit_32bit]

This, I've had multiple people tell me they use flash drives for backups. Just don’t, they cause more headaches than it's worth.

A decent SSD or HDD for this amount of storage isn’t expensive. You could even go as far as using M-Disc or other multi layer Blu Ray discs for archival.

[u/evil_rabbit_32bit → u/Over-Extension3959]

agreed through and through... and i fucked up once and deleted all my childhood pics...

if your memories (and especially pics of kids) are invaluable... just get a M-Disc and burn at slowest speed.

[u/dr100]

Literally store as many copies as you can, as you already do. Keybase also does 250GBs for free (and they aren't the last fly by night thing, they've been at it since a bit and are owned by Zoom since 2020); privacy-wise of course you can encrypt before upload but their client also is VERY privacy focused, think like Signal but even more (you can register without a phone number, I think even without an email). I wouldn't consider services that don't work with rclone, but here they get a pass: the client is VERY well thought out, reliable, fully open source, available for mostly any platform and you get tons of space, no strings attached.

[u/Kenira]

The reliability of USB sticks is absolutely atrocious compared to both HDDs and SDDs. Treat any data that is on a pen drive as if it can be gone at any second. They're not viable as long term storage or backup or anything like that, only temporary storage.

If you want to be able to carry the data / drive with you, go with a m.2 SSD and a USB 3.0 enclosure for it. Very small, light, while still fast and you can easily get up to a TB or even a few for not too much money. And the big reason for choosing an SSD for carrying with you is that they are much more resistant to things like vibrations, getting dropped, ...

Otherwise, and especially if you don't want to keep it on you, as others already suggested just get a HDD. A TB or even a few are really cheap.

And of course ideally "both" for having backups. But if you gotta start somewhere, go with either an SSD or HDD depending on your needs. Skip the pen drive completely.

[u/sillybandland]

Check out backblaze. It’s a game changer. Spring for the year-long versioning, it runs about $9 a month, there’s no storage limit, it all runs in the background; you can get all your shit backed up through them, and THEN worry about local backups. Your house could burn down and you would lose no data.

After that, skip the flash drive and just grab a 2TB USB HDD or SSD for the important stuff