[photonius]

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-flags-photos-of-fathers-sick-son-as-child-abuse-informs-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.

[Klaus]

The thing about "the cloud" is - at least the more serious vendors should have data replication across multiple data centers in place.

e.g. Smugmug uses AWS S3, it seems. S3 has a durability of 99.999999999% with a typical data distribution across 3 data centers (unless they went for single zone - which is unlikely).

No home-based data storage can beat this in terms of durability really.

That being said - yes, the internet bandwidth can be an issue - local access is still way faster.

PS: I don't use Smugmug for backup. But I don't require super durable storage.

[Rover]

Given the absurd storage capacity that is now available on tiniest of devices, guess I could "back up" all of my stuff that matters (and 90% of my photo archive does not) to an SD or even Micro SD card, and always have it with me, down to it being in the phone. Hmm, that's an interesting idea I'll definitely have to explore. :-)

There's other bloated stuff like games (the few that I have...) But I can do without most of those anyway.

One thing is certain; I would never want to be left without physical copies of data. Thankfully those do not have to manifest as stacks of DVDs like they did 15 years ago (I still have many of those and don't know what to do with them).

[wim]

Given the absurd storage capacity that is now available on tiniest of devices, guess I could "back up" all of my stuff that matters (and 90% of my photo archive does not) to an SD or even Micro SD card, and always have it with me, down to it being in the phone. Hmm, that's an interesting idea I'll definitely have to explore. :-)

There's other bloated stuff like games (the few that I have...) But I can do without most of those anyway.

One thing is certain; I would never want to be left without physical copies of data. Thankfully those do not have to manifest as stacks of DVDs like they did 15 years ago (I still have many of those and don't know what to do with them).

If you do go with SD-cards, especially micro-SD, do yourself a favour and go with SLC-cards. These are the most reliable and fastest, be it a little more expensive. I have seen MLC-cards fail too often, with irretrievable data as a result.

Alternatively, the small external SSDs as provided by, f.e., Samsung are great as well. I own a couple, couldn't be happier. No moving parts, so very safe compared to spinning disks, and the price has come down over the years as well, although those prices seem stagnant lately, probably because of production problems thanks to corona.

[Rover]

Thanks for the hint, wim. Guess SSDs are just a little more "burdensome" than SD cards because they can be hooked up to a phone anyway. I've even connected a bona fide external HDD to a phone and it worked well - had enough power and I could access files in an NTFS partition (although that was more of a curiosity). Good time to be alive.

[wim]

Thanks for the hint, wim.

It's only a pleasure! I am speaking from my own experience and that from my retailer friend as well.

Guess SSDs are just a little more "burdensome" than SD cards because they can be hooked up to a phone anyway. I've even connected a bona fide external HDD to a phone and it worked well - had enough power and I could access files in an NTFS partition (although that was more of a curiosity).

Yes, that is pretty standard now, these days. I really like the Samsung T-series external SSD's. Just the right size for not too easily losing one. I did lose SD-cards in the past, they slip too easily from a bag if you are not careful enough.

Good time to be alive.

Absolutely!

Kindest regards, Wim