this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Cheapest way to back up a lot of data? (pawb.social)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Inkstainthebat@pawb.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hello!! Some recent technical problems on my family's NAS gave me a big scare and finally pushed me to figure out a way to back it all up. I'm asking here specifically because I really don't know where to even starts because of the fact I've got just under 50 terabytes worth of data stored in a 7-disk RAID-5 and would prefer to keep it cheap. What are your suggestions?

Edit: thank you for all the suggestions, I'll probably be considering using Backblaze for backups, or perhaps seeing if I can scrounge up old unused disks from people I know. Thank you all again <3

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[–] badbytes@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Tape is still the cheapest and best archival medium. Drives are expensive, but the actual tape is cheap. But 50TB might not be enough to justify.

[–] cm0002@suppo.fi 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm heavily researching tape for my data, I currently sit around 400TBs Total but only around 200 in data that id actually want to backup and can't just redownload.

Iirc the break even point 100-150TB

ETA: that break even point might actually be lower now that I think about it since that number is probably outdated when I did it and doesn't account for the shortage crap

[–] androidul@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I just came here to say exactly the same thing. Tapes for the long term, but you also have to take reaaaaaly good care of how they’re stored ie. don’t store them under the kitchen sink in your bathroom

[–] Mad_Punda@feddit.org 7 points 5 months ago

My kitchen sink in the kitchen is fine though? What about the bathroom sink?

/s

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 months ago

The tape drive costs more or less 2000€ (without VAT), the tapes cost about 80-100 for a 15tb drive (and compressed capacity doesnt count as the to be backed up data is probably not just a database or text.

Don't think there are much economic options beside finding the cheapest S3 storage or a secondary backup server.