Where to back up loads of data?

No bad, but it might cost an arm and a leg... so will buying large HDDs. Whatever you do, simply copy-paste your data to the disks or tapes, avoid using any third-party backup applications. Once I tried to backup my data on Iomega ZIP-100 magnetooptical disks using Iomega's own backup utility. Unfortunately one disk was corrupt for some reason rendering all the set useless! Had I just copied-pasted the files on the disks without using the backup utility, I would only lose some files, or in worst case all the files on the specific disk. I would still be able to restore the files from the rest of my disks. Let alone that the Iomega software worked only in Windows 98. After moving to Windows XP I wasn't able to restore my data! However, there were Windows XP drivers for the Iomega drive, so I could read simple files from the disks! I think you get the idea.

PS: You normally wouldn't want to use an old parallel port Iomega ZIP drive in Windows 10/11, but for those having old disks they want to access them, the Windows XP x64 driver works up to Windows 7 64-bit (manually forced from Device Manager if you have the files in a folder). To use them in Windows 8 or later you can create a virtual machine running Windows XP and pass control of the parallel port to the guest OS. I have done this with VMWare Workstation running Windows XP. You can then copy-paste files between the guest and the host or copy them to a shared folder. I have done that with an onboard parallel port, but it should also work with a USB to parallel port cable. The USB version of the drive should be even easier to use, just plug it and pass control of the device to the guest OS.

Oyen Digital 120TB Fortis 5C 5-Bay USB-C External Drive Array Amazon.com

Not cheap, but very practical.

I just hope by the time I need that large storage, a 50TB disk will cost as a 5TB does today.

Hi folks
16TB disks are cheap enough and just attach to any old NAS /Laptop --if necessary via a 2 bay external caddy.

Plenty of storage attached to this MinPC running Fedora server 42 with external 2 bay caddy attached via USB3 == 2X 16 TB HDD;'s in those.
Got the MiniPC for €200 or so on Amazon Prime day




Cheers
jimbo

How much would eight cost?

Here in Greece, according to our price comparison site www.skroutz.gr the cheapest 16TB model is Seagate Ironwolf Pro 16TB 3.5" 7200rpm ST16000NE000 starting at about 265€, not exactly cheap, but a good candidate for a birthday present...

spapakons said:

At least 10 years worth of 4K home videos, most of them with very little compression or even lossless... Need say more? Now imagine 30 years worth of data. Older codecs available would take five or ten times the disk space for the same resolution and image quality as newer codecs. For example you need minimum 5000K bitrate to get the same quality in SD video in MPEG 2 compression that you get with 1000K or less in AVC compression. If you change the compression settings from medium to slow or slower you can get the same quality with 500K with HEVC compression. You get the idea. The older the data the more space they need. The same for audio files and less efficient data compression utilities (old version of WinZIP and WinRAR).

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I never did compress any of the 4k videos they where straight out the camera.

spapakons said:

Here in Greece, according to our price comparison site www.skroutz.gr the cheapest 16TB model is Seagate Ironwolf Pro 16TB 3.5" 7200rpm ST16000NE000 starting at about 265€, not exactly cheap, but a good candidate for a birthday present...

Click to expand...

The issue is not hard drives, i have loads of hard drives the issue is where do you put that much data to avoid losing it all in a house fire.

Like I said, keep the older data in separate disks stored somewhere else, not in your house. They don't need to be connected to a server. Maybe a safe would survive a fire? There are safes that can be embedded in a wall or floor with a lot of cement around them to make them hard to open.

Perhaps your bank would store them?

kelper said:

Perhaps your bank would store them?

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Seriously, if you rent a deposit box at your bank, you can store inside anything you want, even some hard disks with data. Not a bad idea!

hdmi said:

LTO Half-Height Drives

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This is a great idea. Forgot about tape.....

Just make sure you get a couple of tape drives, so if the original fails you can use the spare drive and not get stuck with unreadable tapes if the technology is obsolete in the future and you cannot buy a new drive.

Be careful of the environment where you store tape. Too hot or too cold, and your tape degrades. Ask me how I know.

pseymour said:

Be careful of the environment where you store tape. Too hot or too cold, and your tape degrades. Ask me how I know.

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Also true.......I like the bank idea. It would be a pretty standard temp I would imagine.

spapakons said:

Seriously, if you rent a deposit box at your bank, you can store inside anything you want, even some hard disks with data. Not a bad idea!

Click to expand...

Until the bank burns down...

You got it too far... What if there is the end of the World? You will lose all your data but you will be too dead to care...

andrew129260 said:

Also true.......I like the bank idea. It would be a pretty standard temp I would imagine.

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I looked into a bank the cost is about the same as paying for the cloud. $150 a year for a 10x10 box. Not sure how many HDD that would hold.

You also need a appointment to use it.

David9726 said:

The issue is not hard drives, i have loads of hard drives the issue is where do you put that much data to avoid losing it all in a house fire.

Click to expand...

Have you looked into fire resistant vaults/guncabinets? And then put in a part of the house, that can burn the least, concrete/brick structure. Then store you backup disk in there.