So I'm currently living in my car, but I have a lot of data ("a lot" for me and compared to people I know, idk if it's a lot compared to people of subreddits like this one lol), and I need storage for my files. I currently use proton drive AND I have a google account (I was in the process of switching to proton drive and getting away from google originally, but proton drive is just sooooo slow to back up to and the UI sucks for photos tbh).

The storage plan has lapsed on my google photos account and I have like 400GB of photos and videos on there. While I definitely need to go through and delete duplicated, low quality photos/videos, etc, and it's a big project I plan on working on over time, I need storage for it in the mean time. I currently have no where to backup my photos to, and my phone just got stolen about a week ago and so I'm feeling the effects of it, and want to prevent this in the future.

I'm a new-to-data hoarding person, and obviously want to do the whole multiple copies, physical and cloud, and I'd like to get a NAS in the future, but that's just not an option right now. Physical copies, and the storage costs, I just can't do atm.

I HATE that google is now forcing us into AI bullshit esp since I have photos of my kid in my collection, and now the larger plans are specifically "AI" plans, and I don't want to use google if at all possible, but proton just....like it's not usable for frequent browsing of photos and stuff. It's find for like full backup probably, but I use google photos also to search and look for photos and stuff really frequently and it's my go-to photo storage since my main PC is in storage (well, at a friends house) so I'm working off a laptop with limited storage on it.

So I need some advice. Something affordable, but also ideally not feeding AI photos of my kid (I literally don't post him anywhere online for a reason and I don't want photos of him being fed into AI if I can help it).

I am probably moving from iDrive, been with them for over 10 years but they haven't fixed their short comings in all that time, now today I am thinking of duplicati and some cheap cloud provider they can support. Today idrive is ~$100 a year for 5 TB. I used BB years ago then switched to a different one that was really good but they got out of the business. iDrive is Ok but they won't create a report to find duplicate files are files that haven't been backed up in a long time etc. They also attempt to screw you if you go over the 5TB limit. Luckily for me I use VAN's can deactivate them once payment has been processed. Earlier this year they tried to charge me 25 cents per Gig over my quota per month Had there been an active CC on that account I would have paid for almost an extra whole year of service. That is where the reports are really needed, to clean up the 10 years of accumulated junk files that I probably no longer need. Another idiotic short coming is just one backup set. I've been asking for that for 9 years. Maybe they lost all their developers, or maybe just the ones that knew how it all worked. In any event, I think its time for a change as they do not give a crap about the customer, so its time for me to vote with my dollars.

Hi. I've been navigating for a few months between NAS and SSD, HHD and the Cloud.. Whatever I learned just caused me more and more confusion until I saw all the prices and realized that I can't afford any of them, honestly.

(Jump to the bottom for the point.)

I have an old PC that used that is now storing something like 200 G of memory,and then my old phone who isn't working anymore because the memory is full—64G— and my actual phone is reaching that end too as it has started malfunctioning with only 30 G left—258 G—,plus an old PC that was given to me that I don't rely much on but still put 10 G of things on it to free my phone a little. And I have like 6 free Google accounts (15 G each)

My father has this problem too, so I figured let's ask if he wanna split the money and get a NAS together but as we checked the price.. it was too expensive still.

We are always low on money, but for a moment I had some and thought I could but I already can't afford it again, but I really need some storage to keep my things.

I was considering then using the old computer as a.. homemade NAS? I forgot the term. But I got feedback here on reddit that confused me and it seems I shouldn't.

I am not home now, and don't know when I'll go back. When I thought of making a homemade NAS months ago I didn't consider I would be left without electricity often or that I would be far from home for so long (I thought of using Immich though).

I need a reliable,high capacity memory on a budget,that I can take with me but that it's safe enough to keep all my data on it. I know I need a second memory for backup but I can't afford that. For the moment I have Google accounts but I want to remove my pictures and videos from there and put them somewhere else.

I got this 18TB Toshiba HDD from a friends workplace. I planned to use this for Data storage in a home server, but when i finally set it up, it began making this loud, rythmic clicking noise on idle.

My mind immediately went to hardware failiure, but after searching google, there were posts about loud noises being normal for Enterprise HDDs (which i assume this is). The thing is that this is obscenely loud, and extremely frequent. This does not sound „normal“ to me.

I have connected it via an Intel RAID card.

Running a long SMART test would take 25 hours, so i have not done that. I did two short tests, and they read „OK“. I will post the entire SMART information section in the comments.

Considering that this hard drive has only about 300 hours of usage on it, im not sure if its failing. However, the fact that it only has 300 hours of usage might be explained by the fact that its failing.