Question for Data packrats

Nathan

Nathan

SF VIP
Location
High Desert- Calif.
Ever since a data storage hard drive died back in the early 2000s resulting in the loss of 5GB of data, I've been just obsessive-compulsive about preserving and having redundant data backup. Nowadays I have 3 internal storage drives and two external USB storage drives, with about 3/4 of a TB.
But, it's all a completely disorganized, redundant mess. It would take forever to sort manually.

How do you handle your data 'stash'?
 

If you can’t find what you need why keep it?

I would toss them all and start over rather than waste time and frustration trying to figure it out.

Other than photos most of the things I’ve saved over the years have no real value or can be replaced if needed.
 
I used to do what you do. Now that I am using Win11 PRO, everything is backed up to the cloud, Microsoft OneDrive. In case my computer dies or gets lost or stolen, I have two of them. Both of my computers use full disk encryption with Bitlocker. For all intents and purposes, my data is both infinitely safe and infinitely secure.
 
I have two external usb hard drives, one white and one black. I also have a little log book. I alternate between the two drives. When one gets full, I delete the older stuff. Family photos are also kept on CD's and thumb drives. I go by the saying " If it isn't backed up twice, it isn't backed up."
 
I have a Seagate 1 T portable drive that backs things up all the time for me. For my music, I use USB memory sticks. They are cheap. I refuse to use Google "One Drive." For some reason they want me to use those "free" 5 GB of memory and then they can take me for monthly payment for more space.
 
Packerjohn said:
I have a Seagate 1 T portable drive that backs things up all the time for me. For my music, I use USB memory sticks. They are cheap. I refuse to use Google "One Drive." For some reason they want me to use those "free" 5 GB of memory and then they can take me for monthly payment for more space.
Click to expand...
The "One Drive" is actually a Microsoft thing, which I wouldn't be doing business with. Google Drive is useful for my purposes, I have Gmail, use Google Docs, Google Sheets(spreadsheets) and Google Photos, which automatically uploads every photo my wife and I take, with our Android phones. It took me several years, but I finally burned through the free 5GB of storage, but I give them $1.99/month for 100 GB's of storage. With most of that as photos, it will take a while to use that all up.
 
I keep a USB drive hooked up, and it does a "backup" nearly every day. I only have about 1/4 of my HD filled with data, and periodically, I clean it up. Any family photo's, etc., that I take, I move them to a DVD.
 
I have 3 External Hard-drives.. one is old and only 500 mgb... the other 2 are both 2 TB...

As an avid Photo taker.. I need the storage.. and all my Daughters' childhood photos are on there too.. as well as all my photos from my travels all over Europe, and my second home...

I've also got Icloud Storage..

I keep everything in files within the Ext HD's
 
I have a USB flash Drive with one folder titled Documents.
This folder contains other folders by name, Finance..which includes folders for Banking, work sheets etc., Government, Photos, Tax, Gifs etc etc.
I update it once a month unless I have any pertinent changes in which case I update immediately.
Then I make a copy of that so actually have two backups in the event that one gets mislaid or whatever

Though said to be safe I would never use the cloud for backup of personal data.
It can be hacked if someone gets your password especially now with all the mobile phone activity.
 
Nobody can ever get my passwords. They are securely stored in a password vault. And even if somebody could magically obtain them, I have 2FA for everything, including access to MS OneDrive. I have never been 'hacked' and never will be.
 
I was a lot like you back in the day but now I just save everything to Google Drive. I really do not have anything pressing should I somehow lose it that way. Google always have the "takeout" option anyway. I do feel safe with it there. As one tech expert who I follow once said, Google might not be always straight up when it comes to your privacy but when it comes to security they are top notch (Paul Thurott). I do use Google Photos for my photo backups. Easy to use and their free storage space is rather generous.

One thing I do keep physical backups with is my music. I learned my lesson about that the hard way. I use to have over 300 CD's. When Amazon offered a music locker I used that service to back up all of my music and did the same when Google Music came out. I went ahead and gave away or sold most of my CD's. A couple of years later Amazon discontinued their music backup service. No problem I thought, I have Google Music. A couple of years later they did the same thing. My music did get transferred to You Tube Music but it is very tricky to download my music from there. I did do it though and now have all of my music backed up on an external hard drive.

I also do have my system restore backed up on a USB drive just in case...
 
I used a duplicate file finder software once to clean up multiple backups on the exact same storage unit.

I just have a couple 2TB external drives and I alternate laptop copies to them.
 
Re logins/passwords, I use an address book that I generally tuck away.

I do a monthly backup to an external hard drive. I've had to use it on very rare occasions, but was very glad to have it when I needed it.
 
Nathan said:
Ever since a data storage hard drive died back in the early 2000s resulting in the loss of 5GB of data, I've been just obsessive-compulsive about preserving and having redundant data backup. Nowadays I have 3 internal storage drives and two external USB storage drives, with about 3/4 of a TB.
But, it's all a completely disorganized, redundant mess. It would take forever to sort manually.

How do you handle your data 'stash'?
Click to expand...
I have a 3TB external storage drive. It is a mess, too. Once in awhile I go through and organize it. This is one of the things I do when I need to zone out. If I'm feeling very stressed, there's nothing like a data organization project to calm me down. It helps that I hyper-focus, which is normal for me. I block everything out and it's just me and the data, nothing else.

Playing Mahjong works the same way. So does doing taxes. I think I'd rather play games.

My photos are in Google Drive. If I ever have to organize them again, I will scream. I still have 4 large boxes of photographs to scan in, but I've been successfully avoiding doing that for at least 1.5 decades. Avoidance can be an accomplishment, I think.
 

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