The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/New-Seaworthiness-58 on 2025-05-02 04:18:56.
My Situation:
I've got a 7 year old laptop that's clearly got not much longer with about 1.5 TBs worth of files and my newer Laptop is nearing 2 TBs and alot more to come and I've only recently realized "Wow, I really need to Back Up my files."
These are years worth of stuff i've been gathering that I definitely don't wanna lose. From images, music, movies to larger files like backup/installers for games (a bunch of abandonware too).
What I'm doing right now: I can't afford to buy a huge more long-term drive right now (but i'm saving for it) What I'm doing is buying a 1TB WD External HDD at a time. I've purchased two HDDs not completely filled up but close to 2TBs used. I'll probably gonna need another 2TBs by the end. This is just a starting point of course. Also I just feel more safe having multiple Drives, rather than one huge one where worst case could end up losing everything.
Though, I understand files are spread out over multiple drives instead of actually having redundancy.
!EDIT: People are getting caught up about the 1TB drive. You're right. Value for money, absolutely not. My Bad. I thought initially of only saving the most absolute important files at first, then later decided I should just go all-in.
I want to reiterate that the 1TB drive is *not meant to be my long-term means of Backing Up data. I'm simply buying time right now till I can afford a better storage device.
My Plan:
So I'm very basic when it comes to Data Hoarding but here's what I'm thinking. My 7 year old Lenovo laptop has survived this long from alot of use and pretty much all my files on it are still intact. So I'm thinking PC's or Laptops make great storage devices, so I'm planning on getting a lower-end Laptop just with alot more Storage. As an added bonus this way I can still readily access my files like the videos and music.
I feel alot more comfortable with that than with having a tiny box of an External HDD.
I'm not at all knowledgeable of the different products out there for storage nor the practices for preserving Data. So again, very much need your feedbacks on the above and really looking for suggestions. Thank you, all and sorry for the long post.