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Comment by Zm44 | Hacker News Reader

Because you can self-host it all and validate the source yourself!

How can I practically verify 2TB of a life's worth of files while guaranteeing I won't have data loss due to some edge cases and race conditions that delete my data.

Every time I've created my own backup script I realized knowing what to delete and when is not easy. IMO the practical solution to this is to just pay for more storage (within reason).

How can you guarantee you'll have access to your 2TB Google Drive when they ban your Google account for breaching terms or accidentally tripping a circuit breaker across one of their offerings?

Yup, pay more but get 2 providers.

Or just get a 2TB hard drive for $30 and put your data there. For the cost of storage, you might as well buy three of them.

This is unironically why I do not depending on google for products this important. I do have premium google drive as I needed barely over 15gb, but my main cloud storage is dropbox. A YT comment I made 10 years ago can't break Dropbox's TOS, and since premium storage is their whole business, they will take the product more seriously.

I also have a 14TB RAID 5 NAS at home. And my Desktop PC has 6TB of RAID 5 (had that first, mostly used for video games these days).

A backup is not something I fear of losing access to because by definition it’s a copy.

However I am more afraid of my data being exfiltrated and imo there is a more risk of that with a “vibe coded 1 person 1 week old” app rather than any of the major providers.

Look at it this way; all those reel to reels of grandpas and VHS tapes of dads are in the trash now.

They too thought they were storing important history. Only for their heirs to bin their stuff in order to focus on their lives.

Be less needy. No one cares anyway.

I'll never forget when my Grandpa died 20 years ago, the first thing my dad did - even before telling us - was look for photos. His siblings did the same and they came up with a collage of around 30 photos I had never seen before that gave me a small glimpse of the highlights of his life.

My other grandpa, controversially used a big chunk of their wedding money on a good camera. They traveled the world and lived abroad for several years right before and after my mom and aunt were born. Because of this, we are all able to see such a fascinating and meticulous glimpse into their lives. Each photo tells a story even if the story is boring, but I really appreciated the small details. Even random pictures of cars that my Grandpa thought were cool. Or the mean guard dog they had in Taiwan while it was still a puppy. Or my mom on the Trans Siberian Railroad in the middle of the Cold War.

These stories and my own appreciation of photography have made me realize how valuable every photo I have is, and I'm willing to put in effort to save them. When I'm old and dying of dementia, I'll be able to look back at my life in incredible detail one last time. Even the dumb meme's I decided to save will tell a story.

I still have a deep appreciation for living in the moment and knowing not everything should be captured, but we live in an era where I have a really good camera in my pocket at all times, and the ability to store all those photos forever cheaply.

How can you practically verify that OneDrive won't do this either?

I will never use one drive even if they paid me. I use Dropbox + Homelab NAS with RAID 5 + old desktop PC with a RAID 5 drive. I have a lot of RAW photos to keep.

> How can I practically verify 2TB of a life's worth of files while guaranteeing I won't have data loss due to some edge cases and race conditions that delete my data.

Same with literally every other backup software. Have two, and test restorations regularly. It's not easy, but nothing worth it when you need it ever is.

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