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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

>Is there an effort to build a solution to problems like this that don't rely on a friend of a friend from Google 'fixing' things.

I know It is easy to say to own your own things / Video. In reality a reliable storage system is not easy nor cheap. A BTRFS / ZFS system that is Turn Key solution with drive redundancy and error correction by default. And that is ignoring other things like security.

My dream solution would be something like an Apple TimeCapsule that also works for iOS. And may be a bundled subscription that give you offsite backup and snapshots.

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I would describe an off-the-shelf NAS as easy and cheap. A 2-bay model with drives costs <€500 and protects against drive failure. You need a bit of technical knowledge, but all the big manufacturers have relatively user-friendly GUIs.

It's not a highly redundant enterprise solution, but it's decent for home and small business users, especially since the alternative is usually 'nothing'.

>I would describe an off-the-shelf NAS as easy and cheap

Only Qnap offers ZFS and Synology offer BTRFS. And none of these file system are default option. ( I dont think they do scheduled scrubbing by default either ) They are also only available on mid range model. Qnap had third or forth security issues with Bitcoin ransomeware. Synology requires lot of work to turn off All internet facing features. To the point they dont want you to do it because all Internet facing features are their product differentiation. I think most user want more like a DAS ( Direct Attached Storage ), or NAS that is only accessible via Intranet.

Once you have that setup, a DS220+ with two 4TB NAS Drive and a usable 4TB storage cost $500. ( Or $400 if you use non NAS / Long Warranty Drive )

I am not sure if $500 / $400 for 4TB is cheap or affordable to average consumers.

Seems to me a DVD burner would work wonder here. Make a vid, upload it to Youtub, burn a copy, put it in a sleeve, and you have a very reliable backup system. I've got DVD's that I made over 15 years ago, that are still watchable.. I've got a CD that I burned 21 years ago (wedding music). It's in my car right now.

Yes. But just want to mention self burnt DVD and CD degrade in quality over time. You may want something like M-Disk [1]. ( Someone on HN introduced it to me )

Unfortunately there aren't much R&D into optical disc technology. Would have been nice if we get 1TB per disc.

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

Right? And if you want redundancy, burn multiple copies on discs made by different manufacturers.

That said as said in the other comment M-DISC is really the way to go. Burn a couple of these, store them separately. They're rated for 1,000 years of storage if stored even somewhat properly. You can get them in 100GB sizes, so perfect for this kind of job. Burners aren't crazy expensive, 100GB discs were around $10/disc last time I bought.

TrueNAS uses ZFS by default and they have small SOHO solutions [0], too.

[0]: https://www.truenas.com/truenas-mini/#Configure

Yes it was pointed out many times on HN, but TrueNAS Mini E starts diskless at $800. Not consumer range or are they consumer friendly. I was originally hoping Kobol [1] will get traction and once they gain economy of scale both in terms of hardware and software. It even has a Built-In UPS! And Things will improve. But the market and supply chain is simply too tough.

[1] https://kobol.io

An s3 account in this case would work too.. Or a github account. There are dozens of services that one could use to backup videos.

A stack of DVD's in a book shelf.

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