Where to back up loads of data?

David9726 · 2025-02-11T07:42:38-0500

If you have around 120TB of data where would you store it? Been keeping it on my local server looking for other options in case of a fire or other natural disaster. Putting that much in the cloud is not feasible and the cost would be to much.

I don't have any family or friends that could store it for me, i do have a garage that is not connected to the house but it gets cold and hot in there.

It's about 30 years worth of data.

Tester · 2025-02-11T07:54:14-0500

Offside co-located hosting in your town? Pay a bit for rack space and energy bill, and the internet connection. Set up your device local, copy everything. Then move the equipment to that side, place the hardware, and set up the sync to keep it in sync. We have a couple of sites in my town, you get your own accesscode, and you can enter there day and night, to do what ever maintance is needed there.

spapakons · 2025-02-11T08:07:45-0500

Or buy as many disks as required to have a copy of the data and keep the disks at another location. You don't need to sync everything, only the new data, put the old data (older than 1-2 years) in separate disks so you don't mix them with the current data.

Berton · 2025-02-11T09:09:46-0500

How is it stored now? I use a NAS drive attached to my Wireless Router and can Map the main folder on it from any computer that can access the Router and in turn the Internet. I have 2 x 4TB drives in the NAS running as RAID 1, 4TB total storage with mirroring. [RAID 0 striping would give 8TB.]

I got started building/repairing computers 30 years ago [new job after retiring] and the drives weren't large in today's terms, 540MB was big then but could only partition/format at 512MB and have a second partition..

David9726 · 2025-02-11T09:49:42-0500

I have it stored on two unraid servers. One is always on with all my self hosting apps and the other one i turn on once a month and sync changes over from the other. It works great and has for years.

Downside being if there is a fire they both get burnt. I live in the country IE no hosting in town. My original thought was to store in the cloud what can't be replaced like family photo scans.

cereberus · 2025-02-11T10:45:40-0500

David9726 said:
If you have around 120TB of data where would you store it? Been keeping it on my local server looking for other options in case of a fire or other natural disaster. Putting that much in the cloud is not feasible and the cost would be to much.

I don't have any family or friends that could store it for me, i do have a garage that is not connected to the house but it gets cold and hot in there.

It's about 30 years worth of data.

I cannot imagine why people would hoard 30 years of data (for ordinary no business consumers).

I would not even be able to remember what 98+% of the data is for!

I can see why some professions e.g. lawyers may need to archive data for many years, or MI5 for example.

I bet if you seriously review your data, it would only be a few TB that is absolutely critical, and it would probably be feasible to use cloud services for that subset.

Berton · 2025-02-11T10:51:53-0500

David9726 said:
My original thought was to store in the cloud what can't be replaced like family photo scans.

That could be good but keep in mind the Cloud is still on a computer somewhere and still subject to a number of things such as power failures, hardware failures, hacking, etc. Other things could be current software and future software aiding or preventing access. Things with more permanence are petroglyphs/heiroglyphs.

kelper · 2025-02-11T11:14:22-0500

The cheapest way would be to buy about 12, 12TB HDDs at about £140 each. Less if you were able to source used drives. Are you certain about the size? Do you mean 120 GB?

David9726 · 2025-02-11T11:38:41-0500

kelper said:
The cheapest way would be to buy about 12, 12TB HDDs at about £140 each. Less if you were able to source used drives. Are you certain about the size? Do you mean 120 GB?

102TB to be exact.

David9726 · 2025-02-11T11:45:03-0500

cereberus said:
I cannot imagine why people would hoard 30 years of data (for ordinary no business consumers).

I would not even be able to remember what 98+% of the data is for!

I can see why some professions e.g. lawyers may need to archive data for many years, or MI5 for example.

I bet if you seriously review your data, it would only be a few TB that is absolutely critical, and it would probably be feasible to use cloud services for that subset.

I was a geek as a kid with money, pretty easy to get tons of data over 30 years time. It's all organized by year. All the family VHS, DVD's etc it adds up over time.

David9726 · 2025-02-11T11:53:06-0500

Berton said:
That could be good but keep in mind the Cloud is still on a computer somewhere and still subject to a number of things such as power failures, hardware failures, hacking, etc. Other things could be current software and future software aiding or preventing access. Things with more permanence are petroglyphs/heiroglyphs.

Yeah i really don't like the cloud or paying monthly fees. For the longest time i just used fire/water proof safes as i am not worried about theft.

I still use the safes but who knows if they would really hold up in a fire. You can buy media safes made for HDD's but they are not cheap.

andrew129260 · 2025-02-11T11:59:26-0500

I don't see how anyone could get this much in storage unless they were torrenting, having an insane media collection, or something illegal.

But yeah, with that much storage if you want to keep it your going to need to spend money and lots of it.

No question.

Maybe a local data center or even getting a storage unit having it on multiple Internal Drives in a secure leak proof container.

And as others pointed out, I doubt all of it is required. I would go through and make sure you really need some of it.

Edwin · 2025-02-11T12:08:19-0500

David9726 said:
If you have around 120TB of data...

You need a Petabyte hard drive!

pseymour · 2025-02-11T12:15:12-0500

You could get a hold of Seagate’s 30 TB drives. You’ll need four just to store one copy of the data. Drives are generally about $15/TB, from what I read (check local listings), so that’s $450x4, so $1800. Better get another set for redundancy.

Where to back up loads of data?

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