De-Googling Myself- storage advice?

[harrisonjr98]

For a while now I have utilized Google Drive, photos, and music for all of my storage. As my use cases change over time and I get nerdier, I have had my eye on using local storage for all of my stuff. Not to mention the privacy concerns that would be alleviated. I only really use one machine alongside my phone, so I don't know if I would be looking for a network attached storage solution or maybe just some sort of large external hard drive enclosure That mirrors itself. I would like to have at least two terabytes of accessible storage that mirrors itself automatically, and hopefully do it for $350 or less. I have a gigabit connection, so A network attached solution would definitely work quite well- just not sure if it makes any sense if I'm not trying to access the data from multiple PCs. What's my best bet?

[DrMacintosh]

12 minutes ago, harrisonjr98 said:

What's my best bet?

Throw a 2TB HDD into your PC? 

[3rrant]

13 minutes ago, harrisonjr98 said:

For a while now I have utilized Google Drive, photos, and music for all of my storage. As my use cases change over time and I get nerdier, I have had my eye on using local storage for all of my stuff. Not to mention the privacy concerns that would be alleviated. I only really use one machine alongside my phone, so I don't know if I would be looking for a network attached storage solution or maybe just some sort of large external hard drive enclosure That mirrors itself. I would like to have at least two terabytes of accessible storage that mirrors itself automatically, and hopefully do it for $350 or less. I have a gigabit connection, so A network attached solution would definitely work quite well- just not sure if it makes any sense if I'm not trying to access the data from multiple PCs. What's my best bet?

Redundant HDD in raid, less expensive and highly reliable.

 

Or the same, but after setting up a home server using a newly built PC that will work as your server. If you go for the used parts route it shouldn't even come out too much expensive. If you set a home connection, you're gonna use LAN and not internet.

[harrisonjr98]

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Throw a 2TB HDD into your PC? 

My primary machine is a MacBook pro, So basically what I'm looking for is a redundant raid external drive enclosure

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, harrisonjr98 said:

My primary machine is a MacBook pro, So basically what I'm looking for is a redundant raid external drive enclosure

Gotta get on that redundancy craise 

[harrisonjr98]

13 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Gotta get on that redundancy craise 

I mean it's mostly because this would be the primary location of my personal media libraries and I wouldn't want to lose them to a drive failure.

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, harrisonjr98 said:

I mean it's mostly because this would be the primary location of my personal media libraries and I wouldn't want to lose them to a drive failure.

Drive failures are for suckers. Just luck out and never be affected. It’s that easy! (Sarcasm) 

[Pixel5]

1 hour ago, harrisonjr98 said:

I mean it's mostly because this would be the primary location of my personal media libraries and I wouldn't want to lose them to a drive failure.

please note that redundancy is nice to have but does not replace backups.

 

i have my photos saved on a Synology NAS for local access but i also have it sync my photos into the Amazon cloud as a backup just in case.

Privacy is nice but i rather have my photos potentioally leak (not that there would be anything to care about anyways) than lose them if something goes wrong.

[harrisonjr98]

11 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Drive failures are for suckers. Just luck out and never be affected. It’s that easy! (Sarcasm) 

I think, since I don't store too much data, I might grab one of the fancy new Samsung T5s...

[GDRRiley]

go find your self a used core 2 duo, and get 3 4tb WD red or Seagate Ironwolf drives and run a raid 5 in your choice on a nas OS

[geo3]

No, no, no. Would you people stop telling everyone to get RAID. 

 

RAID alone ONLY protects from hardware failure. ONLY. 

 

Don't even think about RAID until after you have a backup running. Backup protects from a much wider variety of data loss. 

 

OP, get a couple drives, and back up one to the other on at least a daily basis. 

[jkirkcaldy]

It depends on what you want? If you want network storage then building/buying a nas with or without RAID is fine. But whilst you may be protected from a drive failure it's still not a backup. But then again it you want something that it just going to replace google drive, that's not really a backup either so you'd be in exactly the same position. The difference being you would be responsible for the hardware and infrastructure.

 

You could build your nas, a couple of 2TB drives in RAID 1 for hardware failure protection and buy an external 2TB HDD and back up your NAS to the external HDD. Then you have both protection from hardware failure and a backup. If your backup disk is formatted as NTFS or exFAT or HFS then if your nas dies you can plug in your drive and still have access to your data.

[z I]

If you have a gigabit connection you could still utilize Google but encrypt everything before upload?  something like https://www.cryfs.org or https://rclone.org/ If you got a NAS you'd be able to setup these to automatically, giving you both a physical and remote copy.