Hey folks, being the family IT man I’ve held onto all of my families photos/videos over the last 20 years

I’ve been pretty careless with the backups and I know if I don’t do anything it’s only a matter of time before I lose them

Although I’ve never used them, tape drives seem to be the best so I thought I’d ask here if anyone uses them for their homelab?

It might be overkill for a few GB of photos but I’d also use the tape drives for data hoarding purposes so it’s a win win in my book

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    Tape is unfortunately uneconomical for regular people due to the drives costing so much, unless you get a used, older generation one.

    How many GB’s do you mean? Maybe try some optical discs, BD-R at 25GB maybe.

    Otherwise just rent some online storage. Hetzner Storage Box is cheap and Storage Share is only slightly less cheap, and has lots of sharing features (it’s really NextCloud).

    • CrazyLikeGollum@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      If they’re considering optical media, typical BD-R, while viable, may not be be the best choice. BD-R M-Discs would probably be a better choice for backups. Especially if they’re planning on needing access to the data over a period of decades, which would be potentially useful for familiy photos/videos and critical documents.

      They are more expensive, as is the drive needed for them, but not by enough to be out of reach or even unreasonable given the additional durability of the discs.