I have been using Carbonite for many years, even before we went full time.  It works, and even if one of our computers totally failed, I can still restore everything from my Carbonite account.  I can even view anything backed up with my phone app.  It's not cheap, but losing important data can cost much more.  We travel with an HP desktop inkjet printer, sits on our desk in the fifth wheel, and have no problems with it.

Regarding a printer, we were in the UP of MI two summers ago and my better half said that she wanted a printer. It is very rural where we summer in the UP and the Walmart is about 33 miles away so about a week later we went to Sault St. Marie to the Walmart and my better half asked the young man in the computer, cellphone, TVs part of the store that she wanted a small printer and he led us to the printers and there it was printed on the box "the worlds smallest printer". It was small and cheap so we bought it. As usual the ink is not cheap.

Another unrelated story, that Walmart had just opened and we were there on a Sunday morning looking around and I see a liquor store in the Walmart not far from the cashiers and it was slow that time of day, about 9:30am, so I asked one of the cashiers about the liquor store, she was as old or older them me, 69, and she stated that the liquor store was owned by Walmart. I noticed a closed sign at the liquor store but the cashier told me to get what I wanted and pay for it at her register. I stated but it is Sunday and she replied "who are they to tell us when we can buy liquor". I explained that being from the Bible belt in SE Texas all liquor stores were closed on Sunday.

I have a shared hosting web server that I use for client site development. I installed a free cloud server program on it for our personal use and have all my important files, including my photos and videos, backed up to it with automatic updating. 

https://www.ionos.com

https://nextcloud.com

I'm with Lou on recommending dry storage for "rust" drives. We've been moving our home to Colorado from the tornado/humid/hot/flood-prone/bible belt/blue law laden South, to a real Rocky Mountain High. If your storage area is dry enough for swamp cooler use, you are likely missing a better, relatively cool, storage location.

IMHO, the low cost of storing data may contribute to data hoarding. I have twenty TB of drives all with different data and to be honest with myself, they are as foolish as any hoarder. Mine is writing and pics. I'm beginning to think that negatives were a good idea in terms of a single lifetime. I doubt my kids would do anything with my stored data, and there won't be any museums lining up for them. Logically we all know someone is going to start WWIII, and the EMP that results will wipe out all computer data not stored in a Faraday cage. But then we will be gone or going too.

I'm going through my stuff after we move and will be deleting everything someone else would not be interested in, and saving only the truly unique and interesting to me.

I have been archiving/keeping my good stuff along with the bad. Now there is so much I don't have the time to sort and cull. I will likely be deleting whole drives saving only about ten percent or less. And creating a catalogue as I go.

My wife did estate sales after the housing bust made us decide to stop flipping houses and her working in New construction. Go to estate sales and see what things folks thought were valuable enough to keep.

I store less than 500GB on my main system and backup system. And go to the stored data less often. I realize my kids would likely trash them all anyway.

Then just store what's left in a couple of dry cool places.

I used the paid cloud service like Carbonite for several years. Now I just use the "free" Google cloud. That works for me. I cannot find any real advantage that the paid services give me that is not achievable on Google (or Microsoft) free services. No, I do not put drive images (of the OS) on those services, but I do keep images on external disc drives that are stored in multiple locations, so I can restore my drives.

I use virtually nothing locally now. Just a few things like video editing. It would be possible for me to go totally cloud I think since none of my data files (other than just-shot video) are local....they are all cloud-based.

fpmtngal,

I agree with Mark and Jack that backing up some data to a remote server (cloud storage) decreases the risk of loss, is convenient, and can be a wise tool to include in your backup approach. And I agree with you, that for mobile photographers, syncing terabytes of raw images to cloud storage is not an effective solution for most.  I did try CrashPlan for a few months, but decided it wasn't worth the hassle for me.  At the time (on a 1 Mbs DSL Link) it would have taken me weeks to complete the sync. I'm an Adobe beta tester, but stopped actively participating in discussions on their forum about two years ago, when it became obvious, that their intent was to move to a cloud-only model for Lightroom.  IMO, mobile DSLR RAW shooters and cloud storage are not a good marriage.

Lou's suggestion is a good one.  I'd like to add that the desicants need to be periodically dried out or they will become ineffective.  How will you know when they need drying out?  The most common approach is to buy beads infused with a dye.  The most common dyes indicate that they are still working by their color.  There are two dominant types: Blue and Orange.  Both turn clear when they are saturated with moisture.  My understanding is that the blue dye is poisenous, but it also appears to be the most popular indicator.  I don't lick my disk drives, or lenses, so that wasn't something I was concerned about ?

My primary motivation wasn't disk storage.  Mine was that I noticed fungus growing on an interior element of a very old Canon 300mm F4 L lens I own. I ended up buying something that is more durable and convenient.  Yes, it costs more, and the additional up-front cost won't be worth it for many.  That said, I bought 3 Ruggard  PDC24-BB boxes and am very satisfied with them.

I have no connection with B&H (except as a customer) or Ruggard.  I'm just providing an opinion about a product I'm very pleased with.  Well-sealed, strong, and with a very convenient gel bead recycler.

Here is the review I posted October of last year:

"Best Dry Box without the need for continuous power

I've used two of these for a couple months and have ordered a 3rd. I first experimented with an air-tight tub for half the price of this one and bulk desiccant placed in an old vitamin bottle with holes drilled in it. The inexpensive tub hinges were a molded part of the base tub. Inferior design for long-life because after many open-closes, the hinge part fails. And having to refresh the desiccant by pouring it out into a baking sheet for the oven, baking it, and returning it to the bottle is cumbersome. The cartridge with an integrated heater, that just needs to be plugged into a wall socket for 3 hours is much more convenient. Also, as you may know, the desiccant doesn't wear out. There isn't a number of recycles limitation. Yeah, the heating coil or it's connections may eventually fail, but that's a low probability potential failure for 1000 recycles. And it's much more convenient to just plug the cartridge into a wall socket than deal with a home brew solution using an oven. But these are for storage, not shipping containers."

Here's the link to reviews on the box/gel-cartridge (including mine):

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1377861-REG/ruggard_pdc24_bbs_portable_dry_case_24.html/reviews

Dan

I'm not sure cat litter is much of a desiccant.  The only time it absorbs moisture is when she pees in it. Silica gel packs at Walmart are very cheap.

Edited May 30 by hemsteadc

Online storage stays dry automatically.  I've never seen kitty litter in a datacenter...

  On 5/30/2019 at 1:21 AM, Carlos said:

Online storage stays dry automatically.  I've never seen kitty litter in a datacenter...

lol

Edited May 30 by hemsteadc

Good point! 

I think I have my data issues solved in the short-term, my sister has offered me a couple of drawers. I’m thinking that long term I’ll get larger hard drives and transition the info I have on my current drives to them, so they will take up less space.

My files are mostly photos, and I like looking at them. Every so often I’ve used them for something useful (several were used in a book an organization did, but mostly as examples and explanations for others). They aren’t priceless and no one will want to look at them once I’m gone.

But they make a great screen saver, a good conversation piece, and most importantly, they make me smile.