The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/Organic-Tie-4265 on 2025-02-17 09:22:13.
I wanted to share the extremely beginner steps I’ve taken to start collecting for anyone else that’s brand new. This is specifically oriented towards people interested in physical copies of data.
The title is not an exaggeration. I hate technology and I went 5 years without ever touching my computer. When I started looking into this two weeks ago I literally had to search things like “server,” “operating system,” and “gigabyte.” Due to recent events I’ve been drawn to archiving and locally storing data (this will help me be even more offline lol). I also don’t have a lot of money so, thanks to Reddit, I worked out the cheapest way to begin a tiny, clumsy collection and I hope this might help someone else.
My primary goal was to come up with a way to reliably store physical copies of data outside of a cloud service. That means choosing two places to store the important stuff. The hard drives will serve as primary storage, because they can concentrate a lot more data, and the discs will be a fail-safe for backing up anything I don’t want to lose. I opted for two different formats of data storage just because I don’t know how affordable hard drives will be in the future and, while they’re inconvenient, blu-ray discs are reliable and (ime) generally cheaper per gigabyte. I went on Ebay and searched for open box/refurbished to save money.
Total: $222
- BD-R Blu-ray discs (25 for $30): I was told to specifically get BD-R and not BD+R because those are lower quality or something idk. I got the Verbatim brand.
- Blu-ray burner ($106): For transferring data onto the discs. I got the Buffalo brand.
- Hard drive enclosure ($21): For transferring data onto hard drives. I got the Orico brand.
- 1 TB Hard drive ($40): I was told that HDD/SSD isn’t too important to differentiate however you want to make sure whatever you’re buying is compatible with the enclosure. I got a 3.5” Seagate Firecuda.
- (optional) CD cases (40 for $25): Keep those puppies safe and dust-free!
If you have more money to burn and/or comfort with technology there are absolutely better and easier ways to go about collecting (see: this whole subreddit). For instance, there are easy ways to backup hard drives onto other hard drives (something something RAID idk don’t ask me). As I mentioned, price is a major inhibiter for me when it comes to hard drives so this may be a more affordable set-up for anyone that has patience to manually burn discs. It’s a very basic method for someone like me who’s intimidated by like, the task of converting a file lol and so far it’s working out great for my simple needs!