this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
3 points (100.0% liked)

Data Hoarder

24 readers
1 users here now

We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm not storing anything important, so I can do used/refurbished drives and deal with a failed drive, but I'd rather not get scammed. I don't care about brand, I can deal with SAS or SATA. I'm hoping for drives that are 6TB and up to go in a cheap mini-NAS I threw together.

It seems like most stories from lurking on this sub are to stay away from the deals on ebay. Unfortunately that seems to be the only place where you can get a decent drive for ~$50-60 per, because the reputable places only deal with bigger 12-20 TB refurb drives for >$100 each. I'm not spending $1000 to store my cartoons, I'm also unwilling to delete anything I downloaded with my overpriced internet.

Is this a pipe dream and I should just increase my budget? Is it worthwhile to wait and hunt and hope the market becomes more favorable to my dilemma?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

How much space do you need? Number of disks is irrelevant until you know your storage needs. If it can fit under 20TB then just buy two of the same size disks and create a backup on a regular basis.

Fewer disks means less complexity, less power, fewer points of failure, and typically less cost than buying multiple smaller disks to reach the same capacity.

If you want your data to be safe, then have at least one backup, preferably two.