3TB External HD
I do a lot of writing and I also do a lot of photography. That’s two passions that create a lot of files. Now that the world is basically computerized, the text files are saved as digital information. Long gone are the rows and even rooms filled with filing cabinets and paper documents. Prints and negatives are all stored as digital information.
I have gone through a long series of various forms of digital long term storage. I have had to change storage media several times. All non-powered storage like punched paper tapes (yes, I used that), recording tape, floppy disks, CD’s, DVD’s, zip drives, all had their day. With low cost hard drives and low cost cloud storage, the hard drive now reigns supreme.
I have an inherent distrust for “big brother” cloud storage. I use it but not for truly private storage. It is probably the most secure from loss method available but the least secure method for true privacy. So I make my decision based on that quandary.
I home I use multiple hard drives on multiple computers in multiple locations. All available on a network.
The problem is that hard drives do fail. I have just had a three terabyte external drive do that. Everything was lost on the drive but everything on it was also saved to one or more other locations. So all is well except for the need to replace the drive and copy back everything to the big drive that was lost. Thankfully, the drive was far from full!
I still back up to CD’s and DVD’s so I have that going for me too. But standard laser burned disks will deteriorate over time. I buy gold “archive grade” disks for critical information, but loss is still a risk. So it always pays to spread out important files on multiple hard drives as well.
There is a redundant hard drive set up call RAID. I used to have one. Problem is all the drives still live in one “box” in one location.
The golden rule, “I can never have too many backups of various types and places”.