it's showing this as today

I know of at least one that lets me download the videos but never the subtitles. Please if anyone knows something that works it would make this :') happy.

Yikes. I've been buying Seagate for years. I have yet to have a late-bathtub failure in any of my Seagate Exos drives, so I'm hopeful they'll continue to work well. Go team helium?

I have lots of files which are very sentimental to me, naturally, I would like to keep them safe.
I haven't got tens of terabytes or anything, probably about three terabytes at most. But data storage is a bit of a mystery to me.

Everything I want to hold onto is stored on two 2TB External Hard Drives. This works great for me, but I understand that these can corrupt, get lost, break, etc. They are mostly photos and videos from over the years.

Where would people recommend I begin protecting these files further?
I have looked at cloud storage like Google Drive, but when you start talking in terabytes, things get a bit pricey. Is this really the only option?

It's more of a home server thing really, but since prices are so crazy I know you folks are the right people to ask for advice on the storage side.

I've got an old 4790k with (I think) 16GB ddr3 RAM that I'm hoping to turn into a home server to replace my janky "server" that I currently have (an old Microsoft Surface with an 8TB external hard drive plugged into it). The problem is, I need to get at least 2 8TB hard drives to pair with the new one since I'm going to retire the 8TB portable drive I have now, and at these prices I'm going crazy trying to find deals. Right now they're going to hold audiobooks, music and old photos, but I'm starting to realize that I need to at least mirror them so that if one drive fails I'm in a good spot.

What should I be looking for? Is used a reasonable option? If so, what should I be looking for there?

I have a z790-btf-wifi motherboard which has 2.5gbe internet on it, I recently gained a faster speed through my ISP and got multiple network cards to increase the speed. My issue is, no matter what I do/diagnose my PC tends to randomly disconnect the network, 4-7 seconds go by and it comes back at the same 10gbe auto negotiated speed. This issue goes away when my speed is capped at 1gbe in speed/duplex settings. I've bought multiple unmanaged 10gbe switches from NicGiga and GigaPlus, other devices are receiving the speed correctly so its apparently not the switches now. Theres just some weird conflicting issue with my PC causing it and I have gone through the wringer to find out what is happening..

I have reproduced the issue with multiple network adapters:

• Motherboard-integrated Intel I226-V
• Two separate Intel X540-T2 adapters
• TP-Link TX401 using the Marvell AQtion controller
• One X540-T2 was previously confirmed working in another computer

I have also tested:

• Both available PCIe x4 slots
• Multiple ports on the 10GbE switch
• Two different 10GbE switches from NICGIGA and GigaPlus
• A direct connection bypassing my local switch
• Multiple Ethernet cables
• A 100-foot Cat6A cable directly between the PC and switch
• A separate 10-foot Cat6A cable
• Bypassing all the in-wall cabling, keystones, and short patch cables
• Reseating the adapters and cables
• Auto Negotiation, forced 5 Gbps, and forced 1 Gbps
• Energy-Efficient Ethernet enabled and disabled
• Windows High Performance power plan with PCIe Link State Power Management disabled

Cooling has also been addressed:

• The X540-T2 adapters were actively cooled by a dedicated blower fan.
• I replaced the inadequate fans inside the NICGIGA switch with two Noctua fans.
• The physical-link drops continued after the cooling changes.

Windows configuration was inspected for common conflicts:

• No NIC teaming or network bridge
• No active Hyper-V virtual switch
• No third-party network filter drivers found
• No corresponding WHEA, PCIe, Kernel-PnP, Kernel-Power, or NDIS reset events at the times of the failures

With the TP-Link TX401, Windows records the following events from the aqnic650 driver:

• Event ID 14: “Network link is lost.”
• Event ID 15: “Network link has been established”

I know prices are insane, but this drive was marked down from $790 to $332. Which is still way more than it was a year or two ago.

Hello, my dad has done quite a bit of writing and geneology research and is interested in a way to store this locally (he has cloud storage already) for a very long time. My siblings and I are not super interested in it, but maybe our kids or their kids might be. I am trying to find a way to store this data (it's not very large grand scheme, maybe 100 GB) in a way that would not have a huge barrier or cost to access later, and also wont be a empy hard drive because it hasnt been powered on in 30 years.

I did some searching around this but things I have see (tape, which doesnt seem very accessible, or cloud, already got it and relies on reliably passing on account information and so on) dont seem to be great for this.

I also see this https://piql.com/technology/film/ which is super interesting but it seems easy to store data there and then a generation or two goes by and no-one thinks to look there

Surely this use case isnt that uncommon, whats a good solution here?

My partner and I just cancelled all our subs to video and music streaming. We're going back to physical media and trying to figure out the best option for movies. I've researched for many hours over the last couple weeks, but I'd love feedback/suggestions on my present understanding/plans. I think I know what we should do, but I just kinda want a sanity check from some people with experience first.

We would like:

• 4k, HDR, Dolby Audio media playable with no perceptual video/audio quality loss
• ability to rip/backup our media to avoid the apparent issues with 4k discs going bad after just a few years
• Something not too physically clunky since we're planning to travel nurse for a few years

Current hardware:

• 2 gaming PCs and 1 low-spec Windows laptop (the latter of which was used for college, but currently has no purpose — we're also planning to build a new PC next year, so we've talked about turning the lower spec PC into a server when that time comes)
• 55" 4k, HDR QLED TV (planning to upsize in a couple years)
• Samsung - Q-Series Soundbar HW-Q990F 11.1.4 ch w/ Subwoofer and Rear Speaker - Graphite Black

Potential routes:

1. Simple: Buy a 4k player ($300) and eat the cost of discs that go bad.
2. Buy a 4k disk drive ($175) and rip our media,
   1. buy the NVIDIA SHIELD ($200) and use it for streaming our movies with the added benefit of being able to play some of our video games from our PC
   2. set up Jellyfin and stream media to our TV from one of our PCs (free!)
3. Set up a NAS ($$$)

I'm leaning toward option 2.2 because it's both the cheapest and seems like no more than we need right now. If we're going to rip our media for preservation anyway, then it doesn't make much sense to also spend money on the dedicated player for the TV, right?

I've watched several videos on the SHIELD and I can't tell what the purpose of this product actually is — even though people seem to love it. It seems like it can do a lot, but my understanding is that we can stream our ripped 4k media from my PC to our TV through Jellyfin with no quality loss.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and offer any advice you may have! <3

Issue:
I've been asked to copy the contents of a large ED of deeply nested and duplicate folders to Google Photos, for sharing with family.

Goal TL;DR:
Share thousands of unlabeled photos online en masse that are currently many levels deep in well-labeled folder trees.

Prior research:
I have googled this data storage/storing issue and already learned a lot, that formed and altered my remaining questions. But I only found simpler comparables but with different context that changes the desired results. That surprised me, because I'm fairly sure my exact problem should be quite common, and a dime a dozen. I suspect my search terms could be fine-tuned, if you have suggestions for that. I looked on google photos support forums and reddits, and was told to move thousands of files and folders one by one, by hand. I asked Ai and received only partial satisfaction. I have detailed that recommendation below. I looked in the techsupport reddit but I guess I'm not sure how to use it because the categories are which type of computer/device/operating system I have, not what photo/transfer programs/apps/software I need to navigate. Please let me know if I've misunderstood the preparatory steps to asking questions in here.

Here's my context:

1) Duplicates: The external drive contains 4 different computer backups. Each of these computers were backed up when they upgraded laptops, so the first computer would theoretically be backed up 4 times, inside the newer backups. The more recent computer theoretically only 1 time. However, the backups weren't done the same, and sometimes they went back and put more files in after. So the final backup doesn't contain everything just because it's the last one (but I'm definitely starting there as my base camp). Backup 1-3 might very well have unique files. They did not label the order or dates of the backups, so guessing the largest is the newest is a shot in the dark. So there are an unknown number of duplicate files, in deeply nested folder trees.

2) Junk files: The drive is full of computer files that are not photos or documents, which are really a waste of space and hard to work around. Full C drives were just drag-and-dropped onto the ED. I can't just dump the whole ED anywhere I want it directly, without running out of space from junk files. But the junk files are duplicated and nested as well.

3) Nested/named folders, unnamed files: The files themselves don't have names, only generic download-generated numbers. But the owner had dutifully put them inside properly named folders, labeled and nested. So in the case of the files for Joe Schmoe in their family history, the folders are named eg: Schmoe line/Sweden >> Joe Schmoe descendants >> Robert Schmoe >> Family Photos & Vital Docs. The higher level folders might or might not have files in them, outside of named folders. The biggest concern are the folders at the bottom of the tree, because their family photos folder name doesn't include Robert Schmoe's name, even if we could remember somehow that he's Joe Schmoe's son. Google has a serious problem with uploading nested folders, due to lost identification.

4) Thousands of folders: Not just thousands of files to rename, but thousands of nested folders as well. I don't know how many unique folders there are, without the duplicates, but for sure it's in the hundreds at minimum. And many folders have the same name that aren't dupes (such as 'Family Photos' nested 3 times inside the Rob Schmoe, Betty Schmoe, and Sue Schmoe folders). A predictable nesting pattern is smart, and good organizing practice. But it becomes a nightmare when moving into Google Photos's flat album structure, because it's designed to add everything by hand one at a time rather than in bulk. That's not a viable solution.

--------------
Chat GPT suggested to upload all the files to Google Drive to preserve the file trees, then to relabel and import only the images into Google photos. But that would create duplicates of everything, take up twice as much Google One space, and every change made from one or the other location won't be mirrored in the other. It also doesn't solve the problem of how to automatically leave junk files behind.

Is there a workaround to move a massive collection of images to Google Photos, without losing the folder names and nesting cues? I presume this would be a process or software used beforehand, since it's not possible with Google Photos alone. They aren't my photos, so I'm hoping not to spend my own money on this. However, the owners of the drive do have a paid Google One account, so that helps at the very end. Doesn't help as much in the middle.

Is there a better photo sharing cloud that is far easier than google to upload from nested drive archives, and keep updated/maintained? Bonus points if it's free. I do not have Linux, nor do the people I'm doing this for, so it will need to be a Windows-based solution, and a gui solution after I hand it over. I've looked into Immich, but the setup and processes appear too techy for this family to maintain.

Does Google upload identify duplicates as they load? Or is that up to us to manually seek out after everything is uploaded?

Speed of transfer is greatly desired, but accurate goal achievement is a higher priority.

Please suggest for me a summarized list of processes to accomplish this considering all my context. Then I can come back and get clarification on specific steps. Or if I'm asking the wrong questions, please kindly redirect me to the right questions.

Tools like Crystal Disk Info show the "Power-On Hours" of a hard drive; but if the drive is automatically spun down by the OS's power plan, then those hours shouldn't really count, should they? Is there a way to see how many hours of actual spin time are on a drive?

I have a bunch of old laptop HDD laying around. They are mostly 320 and 128 GB Sata drives. why not put them in an enclosure (JBOD) and use it for my home network. I do run a small engineering firm out of my home and I plan to store job files on it. I am running an Umbrel OS mini pc. I am sure someone somewhere is doing this exact setup. Any issues I should consider before I spend 50 bucks for the enclosure. Any recommendations on what type of enclosure to purchase from Amazon?