Comment on Trying to get advice for photo/files storing/syncing
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 month agoHow much data in total do you have? Perhaps 2 or 3 external drives (each large enough to hold all your data) on those laptops could bridge the gap for now. Externals are relatively inexpensive, and using something like Syncthing, they could stay in sync.
I took this approach to consolidate my data to free up drives from machines so I could build a NAS running Proxmox. Then copied that data to the NAS, which is the authoritative data store, the other drives now act as local duplicates.
Alternatively, upgrade the drives in the laptops (depending on how much data you have).
Also, keep in mind growth - once you have your data sorted, watch it grow and use that to predict your need for new storage.
hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
I don’t have that much data now, I usually lack storage (or computer equipments in general) so I tend to not store much. Those laptops have about 1TB storage each so that would hopefully be enough for me now. As they’re old and have ODD I can also have two drives on one, but I’m not sure if that’s needed for me now. I’d avoid external drives as they aren’t really reliable.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Externals are perfectly reliable, it’s how you manage things that matters.
I’ve had (over 30+ years of machines now) as many internal drives fail as externals - which is to say not many.
The key with externals is they lack cooling, so don’t hammer them like an internal. I have some externals that are 10+ years old. One is currently my authoritative drive as I reconfigure my setup. It sits by itself and I tacked on an old case fan to keep it cool if needed.
I’d look at your total data, consolidate it into a single drive and folder structure, and duplicate that across the drives you have, using the first one as the authoritative drive.
Then get a cloud backup like storj.io on that authoritative drive, so you get local duplication and cloud backup.