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Depends on your requirements. I have 2x12TB drives in a NAS that I rsync. I backup some of it to the cloud (software repos, processed photos, misc documents,

Depends on your requirements. I have 2x12TB drives in a NAS that I rsync. I backup some of it to the cloud (software repos, processed photos, misc documents, etc - maybe 200-300GB) and a lot of it just stays locally (raw video, linux iso, all my original, unprocessed photos, etc). I also have an old 10TB disk in a USB enclosure encrypted with LUKS that sits in my cabinet at work which serves as my off-site backup. Every ~6 months or so I bring it back and rsync it with a script and take it back to work. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't even offer anything larger than 2TB, which is terribly small for anyone who's serious about photos or video. I have hours and hours of 4k60 (~400MB/min) video from events and vacations that I want to store. And this was taking using the smartphone in my pocket, I'm not a professional.

mensetmanusman 7y ago
What’s your estimate for the ~cost of the setup, and how many years do you think it will last? Curious if the cost/month is similar to what I calculated.
- lunchables 7y ago
  Good question, I never considered it. The motherboard, CPU (i7 4770) and RAM are a very, very old desktop setup. I checked Amazon and the hard drives were purchased on 10/8/2017 and they were $479/ea. The U-NAS case was $150 and the SSD was a random 120GB SSD I had after upgrading my desktop (it was the smallest of the "spare" SSDs I had in a drawer in my desk). The 8TB HDD were Seagate Archive Drives that used to be the primary storage until I upgraded, so they became offsite backups. Those were purchased 5/8/2016 for $248. The external enclosures I use were $19.99 ("ORICO Toolfree blah blah" I can get you the exact model if you're interested but I assume you can find something newer and better). So direct cost, I'm not really sure. A lot of it was "free" for me in the sense that it was spare hardware. But should be enough for you to guestimate what a setup would cost. How long it will last is really hard to say. I monitor the disk health via smart and by keeping two copies I feel pretty safe. Luckily I'm also a Google Fiber customer (which means 1TB free Google Drive) and I sync a lot of critical stuff (software repos, personal photos, documentation like taxes, etc) to Google Drive for a third backup (following 3-2-1 rule). Right now I still have >1TB free on my primary 12TB drive, and the growth rate isn't very high. The most intensive thing I store is video from my iPhone, so that's really what dictates my rate of growth.

mensetmanusman 7y ago

What’s your estimate for the ~cost of the setup, and how many years do you think it will last? Curious if the cost/month is similar to what I calculated.

lunchables 7y ago
Good question, I never considered it. The motherboard, CPU (i7 4770) and RAM are a very, very old desktop setup. I checked Amazon and the hard drives were purchased on 10/8/2017 and they were $479/ea. The U-NAS case was $150 and the SSD was a random 120GB SSD I had after upgrading my desktop (it was the smallest of the "spare" SSDs I had in a drawer in my desk). The 8TB HDD were Seagate Archive Drives that used to be the primary storage until I upgraded, so they became offsite backups. Those were purchased 5/8/2016 for $248. The external enclosures I use were $19.99 ("ORICO Toolfree blah blah" I can get you the exact model if you're interested but I assume you can find something newer and better). So direct cost, I'm not really sure. A lot of it was "free" for me in the sense that it was spare hardware. But should be enough for you to guestimate what a setup would cost. How long it will last is really hard to say. I monitor the disk health via smart and by keeping two copies I feel pretty safe. Luckily I'm also a Google Fiber customer (which means 1TB free Google Drive) and I sync a lot of critical stuff (software repos, personal photos, documentation like taxes, etc) to Google Drive for a third backup (following 3-2-1 rule). Right now I still have >1TB free on my primary 12TB drive, and the growth rate isn't very high. The most intensive thing I store is video from my iPhone, so that's really what dictates my rate of growth.