08-23-2022, 07:53 AM
The safest storage is multiple copies in different locations.
I would never fully trust an online storage system. Companies come and go, small print changes. Infrastructure has become more fragile. Here in the middle of Europe, the largest telecom had already had major network outages. This winter, Europe may have electricity cuts. Companies get hacked left and right. Your favourite .xx domain may suddenly be subject to sanctions or cut off completely from the rest of the WWW. Networks are spied upon and innocent pictures may suddenly cause you to be investigated for espionage and worse (https://petapixel.com/2022/08/22/google-...ms-police/). So much for the online safety...
So, I would go for a local system with local backup. In addition you can make either an extra backup that you store physically in another location, or you use a cloud that - if it fails, you still have your local backup - with the cloud you just have to be sure to store only harmless pictures, such as those by Klaus (test pictures)...
As to the local solution. If you want to travel, indeed, just go for a small two bay solution. Note that with only 2 disks, you have to mirror (duplicated the data), there is no Raid5 or Raid 6. Raid 5 needs a disk for itself (so at least 3 disks), Raid6 needs two disks for itself (at least 4 disks total) - as you can see, raid 5 and 6 are only useful if you have multiple disks. If you go Raid 5 or 6, I definitely would recommend Raid 6 (which can tolerate two disk failures). The data density of todays disks is so high, that the probability of 2 failures is not improbable. But for Raid 6, to be worthwhile, you probably want to have at least a system with 5 bays.
I do have local two disk based Raid system with two drives (mirrored). Once one drive failed, I popped in another, and all was fine.
So, in your case, you might wish to go with a 2 drive Raid solution (12 or 16 tb disks, mirrored Raid1) for travel, and you back that up to another location either physically or cloud. So you can recover when you loose either.
I would never fully trust an online storage system. Companies come and go, small print changes. Infrastructure has become more fragile. Here in the middle of Europe, the largest telecom had already had major network outages. This winter, Europe may have electricity cuts. Companies get hacked left and right. Your favourite .xx domain may suddenly be subject to sanctions or cut off completely from the rest of the WWW. Networks are spied upon and innocent pictures may suddenly cause you to be investigated for espionage and worse (https://petapixel.com/2022/08/22/google-...ms-police/). So much for the online safety...
So, I would go for a local system with local backup. In addition you can make either an extra backup that you store physically in another location, or you use a cloud that - if it fails, you still have your local backup - with the cloud you just have to be sure to store only harmless pictures, such as those by Klaus (test pictures)...
As to the local solution. If you want to travel, indeed, just go for a small two bay solution. Note that with only 2 disks, you have to mirror (duplicated the data), there is no Raid5 or Raid 6. Raid 5 needs a disk for itself (so at least 3 disks), Raid6 needs two disks for itself (at least 4 disks total) - as you can see, raid 5 and 6 are only useful if you have multiple disks. If you go Raid 5 or 6, I definitely would recommend Raid 6 (which can tolerate two disk failures). The data density of todays disks is so high, that the probability of 2 failures is not improbable. But for Raid 6, to be worthwhile, you probably want to have at least a system with 5 bays.
I do have local two disk based Raid system with two drives (mirrored). Once one drive failed, I popped in another, and all was fine.
So, in your case, you might wish to go with a 2 drive Raid solution (12 or 16 tb disks, mirrored Raid1) for travel, and you back that up to another location either physically or cloud. So you can recover when you loose either.