Question What is the cheapest data storage media?

[kacper6768]

Which data storage media would be the cheapest (1 GB per penny) to make it as cheap as possible? Are external USB drives or pen drives the cheapest? How is it to buy several external USB drives or flash drives, each of them about 1 Terabyte or 1 external disk or flash drive with a capacity of several Terabytes. Is it, for example, to buy 1 external USB drive with a capacity of 10 Terabytes or 10 external drives of 1 Terabyte each. Are external USB drives or pen drives or any other media cheaper? In 2008, I thought that HD DVD or Blu-ray discs will become cheaper, but today's computers are slowly not building optical drives and Blu-ray or HD DVD discs are most often used for games on consoles, but I don't use consoles, I don't know what it's like with these plates. Are blank HD DVD or Blu-ray discs cheaper or more expensive Gigabytes per zloty compared to external USB drives or pendrives. The cheapest is to create free accounts in cloud services and when one free account is full, create a second one and so on, but then you are addicted to the Internet and the administrators of such a service can delete such an account. Why produce external USB SSDs when the most important thing is the price for the capacity, it is only unnecessarily more expensive and USB has high speed limits, it will not use the speed potential of these drives anyway. Servers similar in size to ordinary desktop computers are pointless, after all, the point is to record something and hide it in the closet, why pay for a box and install some server system (usually Linux) on it, as ordinary disks or pendrives take up much less space, but on YouTube I saw that some of them archive data in such servers. I have 1 Terabyte of camera vacation photos and 2 Terabytes of camera vacation videos over the past 10 years, but I could use a few Terabytes to spare. Now I keep my data on various free cloud services, of course, I created several dozen of these accounts so as not to pay for premium. Is it cheaper to get some data storage medias containing 4 or 5 Terabytes in total and wait a year or more until the data storage medias become even more expensive or is it not worth waiting and stock up on 10 Terabytes right away. When there is inflation now, but on the other hand technology is developing, will data storage medias be more expensive or cheaper in terms of capacity per price?
Before I decide to buy a data storage media, which cloud service currently has the most free capacity?

 

[Lutfij]

Where are you located and how much have you set aside for your storage purchase?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Which data storage media would be the cheapest (1 GB per penny) to make it as cheap as possible?

Look for high capacity internal storage. 12TB and up.

 

[punkncat]

We use paid Google Drive options for 1TB and think it is something like $130 a year? I honestly can't recall. We also use Dropbox but not really sure what the costs of that are. For that service we have 2TB.

 

[kanewolf]

Which data storage media would be the cheapest (1 GB per penny) to make it as cheap as possible? Are external USB drives or pen drives the cheapest? How is it to buy several external USB drives or flash drives, each of them about 1 Terabyte or 1 external disk or flash drive with a capacity of several Terabytes. Is it, for example, to buy 1 external USB drive with a capacity of 10 Terabytes or 10 external drives of 1 Terabyte each. Are external USB drives or pen drives or any other media cheaper? In 2008, I thought that HD DVD or Blu-ray discs will become cheaper, but today's computers are slowly not building optical drives and Blu-ray or HD DVD discs are most often used for games on consoles, but I don't use consoles, I don't know what it's like with these plates. Are blank HD DVD or Blu-ray discs cheaper or more expensive Gigabytes per zloty compared to external USB drives or pendrives. The cheapest is to create free accounts in cloud services and when one free account is full, create a second one and so on, but then you are addicted to the Internet and the administrators of such a service can delete such an account. Why produce external USB SSDs when the most important thing is the price for the capacity, it is only unnecessarily more expensive and USB has high speed limits, it will not use the speed potential of these drives anyway. Servers similar in size to ordinary desktop computers are pointless, after all, the point is to record something and hide it in the closet, why pay for a box and install some server system (usually Linux) on it, as ordinary disks or pendrives take up much less space, but on YouTube I saw that some of them archive data in such servers. I have 1 Terabyte of camera vacation photos and 2 Terabytes of camera vacation videos over the past 10 years, but I could use a few Terabytes to spare. Now I keep my data on various free cloud services, of course, I created several dozen of these accounts so as not to pay for premium. Is it cheaper to get some data storage medias containing 4 or 5 Terabytes in total and wait a year or more until the data storage medias become even more expensive or is it not worth waiting and stock up on 10 Terabytes right away. When there is inflation now, but on the other hand technology is developing, will data storage medias be more expensive or cheaper in terms of capacity per price?
Before I decide to buy a data storage media, which cloud service currently has the most free capacity?

The data storage that is used for bulk storage for "the big guys", may surprise you -- magnetic tape !!!

 

[Tac 25]

OP

is that a serious question? or you just like people to read a massive wall of text.

 

[kacper6768]

OP

is that a serious question? or you just like people to read a massive wall of text.

I have 2 computers, each has a 1TB HDD and an old laptop with a 250GB HDD and one 1TB USB HDD, all drives are full. I also have flash drives of several GB, but due to the low capacity, I do not include them. Surely some memory would be useful to store this data, that's why I started this question.

 

[kanewolf]

I have 2 computers, each has a 1TB HDD and an old laptop with a 250GB HDD and one 1TB USB HDD, all drives are full. I also have flash drives of several GB, but due to the low capacity, I do not include them. Surely some memory would be useful to store this data, that's why I started this question.

For home use, a commercial NAS with a couple 8 - 14TB disks makes a lot of sense. BUT you need to remember the 3 - 2 - 1 rule for data safety. 3 copies on 2 separate physical devices PLUS 1 off-site copy. The off-site copy is to protect against fire, flood, theft, etc.

 

[Misgar]

I agree with kanewolf. Tape is my cheapest storage option per Gigabyte. I generate between 300GB and 700GB of RAW + JPG files during each 3 week trip abroad.

Apart from saving files to multiple hard disks in desktop PCs and on three TruesNAS Core RAID-Z2 servers, I also backup to 800GB LTO4 tape cartridges. I bought over 100 second-hand tapes in 2021 for £1.50 each, equivalent to 8 Polish Zloty or roughly $1.90 US each.

An 800GB (native format) tape holds photos from one or two trips abroad and they're so cheap I make multiple backups. They're also virtually immune from Ransomware (with the write tab set to read-only) and tapes can survive for tens of years if stored at the correct temperature/humidity.

LTO4 drives are quite cheap too. I bought one for £25 and a portable drive for £85 second hand on eBay. Controller cards £10 to £20 (6Gb/s SAS).

 

[kacper6768]

Which online drive can I keep my data securely without the risk of blocking it on? I kept my photos on the online GoogleDrive drive, when I wanted to log in, there is an inscription that I broke some rules of procedure and redirects to the recovery site, but only the emails are recovered there, not it was behind the Google Drive drive. After all, posting your photos there is in accordance with the regulations. I have these photos on my hard drive but I'm worried that if the drive breaks and then after replacing the drive I want to recover them and then I will have my data only on GoogleDrive then I would lose my data. I have filled out the appeal form against the decision to ban my account on the GoogleDrive website.

 

[Misgar]

Which online drive can I keep my data securely without the risk of blocking it on? I kept my photos on the online GoogleDrive drive, when I wanted to log in, there is an inscription that I broke some rules of procedure and redirects to the recovery site, but only the emails are recovered there, not it was behind the Google Drive drive. After all, posting your photos there is in accordance with the regulations. I have these photos on my hard drive but I'm worried that if the drive breaks and then after replacing the drive I want to recover them and then I will have my data only on GoogleDrive then I would lose my data. I have filled out the appeal form against the decision to ban my account on the GoogleDrive website.

Cloud storage providers change their rules (and charges) from time to time as you have found out. I don't store anything important in the cloud, but if you're happy trusting your photos to someone else, consider opening multiple accounts with other cloud providers. At the very least I think you should make at least two more local copies of your photos on portable hard disks or USB memory sticks. One local copy and one cloud copy is asking for trouble.