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Comment by albertzeyer | Hacker News Reader

I recently was also thinking about how to organize my data & backups. I still have not really decided. Esp about the software. I collected lots of options here: https://github.com/albertz/wiki/blob/master/backup-software....

At the moment, I really like Perkeep (https://perkeep.org/). But I'm not sure whether this is a solution for everything.

On the hardware side, I also have not really decided. I want to build up my own NAS (custom hardware, no preconfigured thing), which should be quiet (if it is not doing anything, i.e. most of the time), as it will be in my home. Another NAS maybe at my parents home. And then maybe some cloud storage.

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Yes, I was also thinking about perkeep and giving it a spin. I was considering a RAID 1 array for redundancy.

Another thing I was considering was M-Disk[1], that can, supposedly, hold information for 1000 years. But I wonder what other people's experience with it is.

Alternatively, I understand normal Blu-Ray disks should be able to have data retention of about 40 years, and that sounds decent to me.

I was looking into Amazon glacier and/or google cold line, and the prices seem decent, but I do not like the fact that you have to pay monthly, even if a small sum, it's just one more thing to concern yourself with. I would like to prepay and know my stuff is up there for a couple of years.

Normal Dropbox/Google drive stuff is too expensive to store big amounts of data, so not worth it. Plus, you have a copy of it locally also, (at least in normal use cases)

Thinking about it, I think this would be a great idea for a startup. Cheap data storage for long term storage, with competitive prices, the ability to per-pay, user-side encryption and a simple UI that grandma can use to drop photos. It should be able to guarantee that the information you desire to will outlive you.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

> Thinking about it, I think this would be a great idea for a startup. Cheap data storage for long term storage, with competitive prices, the ability to per-pay, user-side encryption and a simple UI that grandma can use to drop photos. It should be able to guarantee that the information you desire to will outlive you.

As a consumer, I wouldn't trust a startup for such needs, because there's a likelihood that the startup would either raise prices, pivot to a different service offering, or shut down entirely.

Google Cloud Platform lets you make a manual prepayment [1], so that's an option worth considering. I know Google gets a lot of flak for shutting down consumer services, but I'm inclined to believe that they wouldn't shut down Nearline/Coldline without a significant amount of notice.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/manual-payment

> As a consumer, I wouldn't trust a startup for such needs, because there's a likelihood that the startup would either raise prices, pivot to a different service offering, or shut down entirely.

Fair enough. It's just that I think something in the field that can do these things would be filling a need. And all companies have to start _somewhere_

But I agree, getting a promise of long-term availability from a new company is a bit rich.

Thanks for the info about GCP - I looked mostly into AWS glacier and I know AWS did not have a prepay offer.

I settled with a SuperMicro's passive Atom solution and a Fractal Design mini case, able to hold six disks. It is very quiet when you tune down the fans and keeps the disks just below 40°C which is optimal for me. We have the NAS in the same room we sleep and it doesn't bother us.

Do you spin down disks? In my case WD Reds generates more noise than cpu and case fans when there is no workload on system.

No. Keeping them running uses less electricity than spinning them up with our workload. The disks are floating with rubber connectors in the case and the noise is nothing we can hear to the bed.

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/node-series...

Thanks, I have node 304 with 3 HDDs, there is no vibration that's true, but I hear spinning plates when there is no other source of sound. It does not look like there is acoustic management available for wd red.

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