How do you back up your most important files?

The title might be a bit clunky, but you get the gist. The DVD era is pretty much dead, replaced by Blu-ray with all that extra capacity. You can pick up a Blu-ray burner relatively cheap, but I wonder how long before those become obsolete too, since gigabytes just don't cut it anymore... trying to archive everything onto external drives of 500 GB or 1 TB when you have a massive collection isn't exactly budget-friendly... maybe sticking to USB sticks makes more sense? They're cheap, small, and easy to handle...

Personally, I’ve got this huge collection of American films, documentaries, and series that I really don't want to lose to decaying DVDs...

I'm open to any ideas. Thanks in advance...

Just open up several different accounts on Megaupload and go ahead and install Dropbox. They give you up to 50 GB for free, though you really have to stay organized and keep track of all your login credentials...
The way I see it, you just install Dropbox, dump 50 GB of files into a shared folder, log in, and then just sit there waiting for the upload to finish.
Once everything is wrapped up, you simply create a brand new account, uninstall Dropbox, reinstall it, and run the whole process over again.
It’s a completely free method, if you have the patience for it, but the catch is obviously that you're stuck with that 50 GB limit per account. From what I can tell, they never actually delete anything you put up. So, whenever you eventually need something back, you just log into the specific account and pull your file down...

Jessica Morris6 said:Just open up several different accounts on Megaupload and go ahead and install Dropbox. They give you up to 50 GB for free, though you really have to stay organized and keep track of all your login credentials...
The way I see it, you just install Dropbox, dump 50 GB of files into a shared folder, log in, and then just sit there waiting for the upload to finish.
Once everything is wrapped up, you simply create a brand new account, uninstall Dropbox, reinstall it, and run the whole process over again.
It’s a completely free method, if you have the patience for it, but the catch is obviously that you're stuck with that 50 GB limit per account. From what I can tell, they never actually delete anything you put up. So, whenever you eventually need something back, you just log into the specific account and pull your file down...

I honestly don't think it’s particularly wise to pin all your hopes on cloud services—I mean, really, think about it! You never truly know when a provider might just pull the plug or decide to sunset a service entirely. And if that happens? Poof! Your entire archive just vanishes into thin air, lost to history. Why take that kind of risk?

analogwalker2 said:I honestly don't think it’s particularly wise to pin all your hopes on cloud services—I mean, really, think about it! You never truly know when a provider might just pull the plug or decide to sunset a service entirely. And if that happens? Poof! Your entire archive just vanishes into thin air, lost to history. Why take that kind of risk?

Look, cloud services can serve as an extra layer—an added level of redundancy for critical data—because you can never have too much protection...

But when it comes to local storage? These days, you can pick up used PC parts relatively cheap, which means you have everything you need to build a budget-friendly Linux-based NAS...

For $500—$267 you could snag a refurbished machine with a warranty, then just set aside a few hundred more for a decent setup of multi-terabyte drives...

However, if someone actually has MASSIVE amounts of data to store and preserve—I'm talking way more than just a few terabytes—then tape storage is the way to go. It isn't exactly cheap... but it’s elegant, efficient, and arguably the best practical solution out there...

Peter Perez75 said:The title might be a bit clunky, but you get the gist. The DVD era is pretty much dead, replaced by Blu-ray with all that extra capacity. You can pick up a Blu-ray burner relatively cheap, but I wonder how long before those become obsolete too, since gigabytes just don't cut it anymore... trying to archive everything onto external drives of 500 GB or 1 TB when you have a massive collection isn't exactly budget-friendly... maybe sticking to USB sticks makes more sense? They're cheap, small, and easy to handle...

Personally, I’ve got this huge collection of American films, documentaries, and series that I really don't want to lose to decaying DVDs...

I'm open to any ideas. Thanks in advance...

A 3 TB hard drive for archiving, priced around $500—is that really such a massive stretch?$200 Not really, right?🎉🎉

The stuff I actually care about lives on my WD MyCloud EX2, which runs two 3TB WD Red drives in a mirror setup.

I don't really view movies as being important enough to justify the extra space on a mirrored backup.

If you’re actually looking to do some proper archiving—meaning you intend to set these files aside and not touch them for years—then I’d strongly suggest looking into Amazon S3. Their Glacier storage is incredibly cheap, sitting at about $0.004 per gigabyte, which works out to roughly $4 for an entire terabyte. That rate applies to your first 50 terabytes, too. Personally, I’ve moved everything vital of mine over there. Some people tend to think the cloud isn't the safest place to stash data, but I couldn't disagree more. Amazon is a massive corporation focused on serious business; the odds of them just vanishing overnight are slim to none. I’ve been using their services for years now (including Google Workspace), and I can tell you, I’ve been more than satisfied.

I’ve never been much of a fan of these smaller Mega-style services. They seem to pop up everywhere like mushrooms after a rainstorm, only to disappear just as quickly, taking all your data along with them.

But hey, that’s just my two cents.

Glacier is fine if you're just dumping stuff you don't plan on touching for ages, like a basic backup. The storage itself is dirt cheap, but once you actually need to pull data back out, the fees hit you hard—plus you can't even grab it instantly. You’re stuck waiting three to five hours just to get your own files...

Two hard drives for the PC: a 1TB drive for the OS and 3TB (split into two 1.5TB units) for backups. Just a heads-up: those 3TB drives—and anything larger—require a 64-bit OS to function properly. Anything exceeding 2TB simply won't work on a 32-bit system.

Personally, I’m still a big fan of using HDDs... grabbing a 4TB drive for about $100 might not sound like a massive amount of money at first glance, but it really all depends on what kind of data you're trying to stash away. Right now, I’m running three different 4TB drives and they are getting pretty close to capacity because I store so much UHD video footage on them; when you consider that a single high-quality movie can easily eat up 50 to 70GB, those costs start to add up faster than you'd think! That said, if you're just looking to back up basic stuff like documents, family photos, or videos with a lower bitrate, picking up a 4TB HDD for $100 is honestly a pretty cheap and efficient way to go.

Jack Alvarez said:Personally, I’m still a big fan of using HDDs... grabbing a 4TB drive for about $100 might not sound like a massive amount of money at first glance, but it really all depends on what kind of data you're trying to stash away. Right now, I’m running three different 4TB drives and they are getting pretty close to capacity because I store so much UHD video footage on them; when you consider that a single high-quality movie can easily eat up 50 to 70GB, those costs start to add up faster than you'd think! That said, if you're just looking to back up basic stuff like documents, family photos, or videos with a lower bitrate, picking up a 4TB HDD for $100 is honestly a pretty cheap and efficient way to go.

I use a "single hard drive" for the stuff I don't really care about, but might want to dig up once in a blue moon. Anything actually important? It never goes on just one drive. I always make sure it's on at least two. The cleanest way to handle it is obviously mirroring them simultaneously.

Don't go archiving your life's work onto a single hard drive. Or, hey, feel free to do it if you enjoy living on the edge. "Important" is a pretty subjective term, anyway.