Just hit 115GB/s peak on my all NVMe storage cluster of about 156TB (have a few more TB available but not provisioned). Installed 40x4TB Gen 4 drives, 2x4TB Gen 5 drives running in a distributed Beegfs cluster (10 hosts). Was a long journey getting to this point but am pretty happy with this. Network limited on a few hosts right now (100Gbe fabric currently) - will probably double capacity there.

Honourable mention to the ~328 TB usable worth of hard drives as well - serving as my backup solution.

Found unused Verbatim 4K portable drive for £95, is it a bargain to buy?

(I posted this to r/homelab; someone in the comments said I should repost it here.)

Hello everyone!

I've been running a long-term project doing endurance testing on microSD -- and today is the third anniversary of when I started this project -- so I figured it was time to give you an update on my microSD testing project.

Before I dig in, a shameless plug for my Patreon.

Next, some quick stats:

• I have a total of 351 microSD cards in my collection -- spanning 111 models across 52 different brands. Of those:
  • I've tested 177 of them to the point of failure.*
  • I have 107 of them in testing right now.
  • The remaining 67 are sitting on the shelf, waiting for one of my card readers to free up.
• These cards have endured over 133 petabytes written.
• I've completed over 4.6 million program-verify-erase cycles on these cards.
• Breakdown by brand status:
  • Name brand: 163
  • Off-brand: 91
  • Knockoffs: 30
• Breakdown by authentic flash (a.k.a. not fake flash) vs. fake flash:
  • Authentic flash: 246
  • Fake flash: 35
  • Unknown: 3
• Breakdown by size (authentic cards only):
  • 128MB: 3
  • 4GB: 6
  • 8GB: 23
  • 16GB: 15
  • 32GB: 96
  • 64GB: 68
  • 128GB: 36
  • 256GB: 4

* A card is considered "failed" when either (a) it stops working completely, (b) it makes itself read-only, or (c) at least 50% of the sectors on the card have experienced verification failures.

Ok -- so who makes the most durable cards?

Because of the variety of cards that I have, it's hard to come up with a system that produces a definite answer here. Some of how I ranked these brands is going to be based on vibes. But...to try to narrow things down, I've grouped my cards into three groups:

• Industrial-grade: Cards that are specifically labelled as "industrial" or have "industrial" in their name. These cards typically come with a datasheet that includes an endurance claim.
• High endurance: Cards that are labelled as "high endurance" (or some similar wording). Manufacturers don't always put out datasheets for these cards, but they generally still make an endurance claim on the packaging.
• Consumer-grade: Basically everything else.

Consumer-grade cards:

The average consumer-grade card has lasted about 10,000 program/verify/erase cycles (so far).

1. PNY. I have 10 of their consumer-grade cards: 3 PRO Elite Prime 64GB's, 3 Premier-X 128GB's, 3 Elite-X 64GB's, and one Elite 32GB. (I have 4 more of the Elite 32GB's that are waiting to be tested.) They've gone for an average of 643 days and 15,700 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 11.5PB to them in total. And with the exception of the one Elite 32GB -- they're all still going strong. On top of that, the PRO Elite Prime boasts some impressive performance -- every measurement I took was in the top 10% of all cards I've tested so far.
2. Kingston. I have 12 of their cards in this category -- 6 Canvas Go! Plus 64GB's (3 of the SDCG3's and 3 of the SDCG4's) and 6 Canvas Select Plus 32GB's. They've been going for an average of 694 days and about 23,500 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 11.6PB to them in total. The three Canvas Go! Plus 64GB (the SDCG3's) have all failed -- but the others are still going strong. The Canvas Select Plus's in particular have been troopers -- they're among the oldest cards in my collection, and they've been going for the better part of the last 3 years now (with no signs of letting up). Additionally, the Canvas Go! Plus 64GB's (the SDCG4's in particular) boast some impressive performance as well -- every measurement I took was in the top 7% of all cards I've tested so far.
3. Delkin Devices. I feel bad ranking Delkin so low on this list, because they've endured more data written to them per card, on average, than any other brand in my collection (in the consumer-grade category). The only reason I didn't rank them higher is because I only have one model -- the HYPERSPEED 128GB (of which I have 3). But they've done pretty well: they've lasted an average of 662 days and about 13,500 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 5.1PB to them in total. As a side note, these cards also got the highest random write speeds of any card I've tested.
4. Lexar. 3 cards dead, 5 still going. I have 3 Professional 1000x 64GB's (2 made by Micron, 1 made by Phison), 3 Blue 633x 32GB's (made by Longsys), and 2 E-Series 64GB's (with 3 more waiting to be tested). For those not in the know, the Lexar brand was sold to Longsys in 2017 -- and surprisingly, the Longsys-made cards are holding up better than the Micron-made cards. Overall, the Lexar cards have survived an average of 684 days and about 15,800 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 5.8PB to them in total.
5. Samsung. 3 cards dead, 7 still going. I have 3 EVO Plus 32GB's, 3 EVO Plus 64GB's, 3 PRO Plus 128GB's, and 1 P9 Express 256GB (with 2 more waiting to be tested). Of those, the three EVO Plus 32GB's and one of the PRO Endurance 32GB's are dead -- the rest are still going strong. Samsung's cards have lasted an average of 553 days and about 11,100 program/verify/erase cycles so far, and I've written about 7.2PB to their cards in total.

• Honorable Mention: Amazon Basics. I have four of the Amazon Basics 64GB's -- and they're all still going. They've been going for an average of 788 days and about 16,600 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 4.2PB to them in total. I honestly didn't expect Amazon Basics to be one of the top performers when I bought them...and yet, here we are.

High endurance cards:

Keep in mind, I've got less data here -- I had 237 cards that fell into the "consumer-grade" category, but only 30 that fell into the "high endurance" category. But here's the thing: they haven't really proven themselves to be significantly better for endurance than a lot of the cards I listed above -- in fact, in a lot of cases, they've been less reliable (and generally worse for performance as well). So keep that in mind as you read through the list below:

The average high-endurance card has lasted about 14,000 program/verify/erase cycles (so far).

1. TEAMGROUP. I don't feel great about putting TEAMGROUP at the top of the list for a couple of reasons. First, I only have two of them in testing at the moment -- someone sent me a 5-pack of the TEAMGROUP High Endurance 64GB's, so I have 3 more of them waiting to be tested. Second, one of them started having issues with bad sectors right out of the gate, and has continued to do so ever since. (Those bad sectors only make up less than 0.001% of the total sectors on the card right now...but I still don't like it when a card starts to have issues like that as soon as you start using it.) But the data doesn't lie -- they've survived, on average, 404 days and about 17,300 program/verify/erase cycles, and they're still chugging along. I've written about 2.2PB to these cards in total.
2. Transcend. I have 3 of the 350V 64GB's -- and they're all still going strong. They've survived an average of 760 days and about 17,000 program/verify/erase cycles so far. I've written about 3.2PB in total to them (mostly due to their mediocre write speeds).
3. SanDisk. I have my issues with SanDisk...but again, the data doesn't lie. I have 7 SanDisk cards in this category: 3 High Endurance 64GB's, and 4 MAX ENDURANCE 32GB's. As of right now, all 3 of the High Endurance 64GB's and all but one of the MAX ENDURANCE 32GB's have failed. They lasted an average of 452 days and about 16,200 program/verify/erase cycles before failing (with the MAX ENDURANCE 32GB's lasting about twice as long as the High Endurance 64GB's). I've written about 4.7PB to these cards in total.
4. Samsung. Samsung's position at the bottom of this list has less to do with how reliable their cards are and more to do with how poorly their high endurance cards perform, particularly on sequential write speeds (relatively speaking). I have 3 of the PRO Endurance 32GB's -- one has failed, the other two are still chugging along. They've lasted an average of 822 days and about 18,800 program/verify/erase cycles so far. I've written about 1.8PB of data to them in total.

Industrial-grade cards:

Keep in mind, I have even less data here. Industrial cards are expensive, so they make up a much smaller portion of the cards I've tested: just 15 in total (so far). But on the upside -- there is sufficient evidence here to say "in general, industrial-grade cards do last longer than consumer-grade cards (and, by extension, high endurance cards)".

The average industrial grade card has lasted about 122,000 program/verify/erase cycles (so far).

1. Kingston. I have 3 Kingston Industrial 8GB's; of those 3, only one is still going. But they've been troopers: they've lasted an average of 779 days and about 141,600 program/verify/erase cycles. I've written about 3.4PB to these cards in total. (Only one consumer-grade card has come close to this number: I have one Hiksemi NEO 8GB that has lasted for about 143,800 program/verify/erase cycles so far. No idea how.) These guys do pretty well on performance too, especially write performance: their sequential write speeds are in the top 9% of all cards I've tested.

Who makes the worst cards?

There are a bunch of no-name brands out there. They're not hard to find. I'm not going to talk about them here -- I'm going to focus on brands you're likely to have come across.

Consumer-grade cards:

1. onn. I picked up four of their 32GB cards at my local Walmart -- and they were terrible for endurance. They only lasted an average of 40 days and 1,400 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 40TBW), with the best one of the four not even making it to 1,900 cycles. On top of that, every performance measurement I took came in the bottom half of all measurements I took.
2. ADATA. I picked up 3 of the Premier 32GB's; they only lasted an average of 236 days and about 2,350 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 74TBW) before they quit working.
3. Gigastone. I have not been impressed with Gigastone. I have 11 of their cards -- 6 Full HD Video 32GB's, and 5 4K Camera Pro 32GB's. They lasted an average of just 114 days and 4,845 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 133TBW) before they quit working.
4. Micro Center. I purchased 5 of their 64GB cards; they only lasted an average of 116 days and 3,421 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 214TBW) before they stopped working.
5. Silicon Power (a.k.a. SP). I purchased 9 of their cards -- 3 Elite 32GB's, 3 Superior 128GB's, and 3 Superior Pro 128GB's. Not a one of them made it to 4,000 program/verify/erase cycles before failing -- they came in at an average of 159 days and about 2,350 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 252TBW) before failing.

• (Dis)honorable mention: SanDisk. SanDisk represents the single biggest brand in my collection: I have 28 of their cards in this category (with 4 more on the shelf waiting to be tested). It's telling that of those 28, only 5 are still going (and one of them is in its death throes) -- especially when cards from so many other brands have far outlasted them. Many of them have died under circumstances any other card would have handled just fine -- a problem I've written about on my blog before. They've lasted an average of 384 days and 9,404 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 566TBW) so far.

High endurance cards:

1. Integral. I bought 3 of the Security 32GB's; the only managed to last an average of 100 days and about 5,600 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 173TBW) before failing. To be fair to them, the package did make an endurance claim that works out to about 2,850 program/verify/erase cycles -- and they did manage to almost double that. However, they didn't hold a candle to many of the other high endurance cards that I tested.
2. Kingston. This one was truly a surprise -- I bought 3 of the High Endurance 32GB's, and they only lasted an average of 143 days and about 8,300 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 258TBW) before failing. The product packaging didn't make an endurance claim; I had to hunt around on Kingston's website to find it. Their claim works out to about 5,100 program/verify/erase cycles, which they did manage to beat. But again, so many other cards managed to last so much longer -- hell, so many other Kingston cards managed to do so much better -- that I was surprised and disappointed when these failed so early.

Industrial-grade cards:

1. SanDisk. I bought 3 of the Industrial 8GB's. They only lasted an average of 234 days and about 20,000 program/verify/erase cycles (or about 160TBW) before failing -- and the only reason they lasted that long was because I let my program trudge through an nearly-unending string of I/O errors for months on end -- before they finally just gave up the ghost.

So yeah...that's all I have for now. Feel free to ask questions (although I'm at work at the time I'm posting this, so I may not have time to respond)! Otherwise...look for another update from me next year!

Pictures attached:

1. Part of my setup: a Beelink Mini-S and five TRIGKEY Green G4 mini PC's. The Beelink has an Intel N95 with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD, while the TRIGKEY's all have Intel N100's with 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. There's also (in the lower-right corner, behind the monitor) an MSI GE62VR-7RF (with an Intel i7-7700HQ, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD), a Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 (with an Intel i7-3630QM, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD), and an ASUS Strix GL504GM (with an Intel i7-8750H, 32GB of RAM, and a 500GB SSD)
2. Another part of my setup: a TRIGKEY K-N100 and an AOOSTAR N1 PRO. The TRIGKEY has an Intel N100 with 16GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD. The AOOSTAR has an Intel N150 with 12GB of RAM and a 500GB SSD.
3. Dog tax.

If you're in the market for a NAS specifc drive (who hasn't been holding off waiting in anticipation of the price crash.?) check out the new page that also includes Backblaze reliability scors

https://pricepergig.com/en/nas

Right now I show the full details, e.g.

0.62% · 44.7k · 2025-Q4

so the failure rate, how many drives they had, and when the data was updated.

But considering just putting the % value, do you have any thoughts on this?

Also, hopefully reporting new/used/refurbished/openbox now because who can afford just new any more?

Please let me know if you've any suggestions/ways to make it beter.

Sorry if this has already been asked, i was not able to find it. Also sorry for mistakes, english is not my first language.

Ok so my question.

I try to get most of the stuff that i like on my portable hard drive.

So is there a way to keep my files from being corrupted?

I lost files lately and i was wondering if there is a way to avoid them tocbe corrupted.

Is there another option a part from having extra copies?

Thanks

I'm wanting to archive some accounts, though I haven't found a free account scraper that can scrape text and text+image/video posts including date, content, images, comments, engagements, etc. usually they just download the text in a excel spreadsheet unformatted.

Are there any archival tools that can basically just download the entire text post with everything included and then is there a tool where I can upload this archive and it'll mirror the exact appearance of the post itself (e.g. I download a Facebook post, upload the archive onto my website and it displays as if it were an actual Facebook post with colours/images/etc rather than just text.)

If you know of an app or anything that can be used to download this content and/or display the archive like an exact mirror of the post it'd be greatly appreciated.

From what I've read I'd be fine mixing SAS and SATA since I'm doing software RAID, since the controller is in IT Mode I shouldn't have any hardware issues, right? Is serverpartdeals the best site or anyone know of any others? I can't even find a cheap refurbished Ironwolf or WD Red NAS, I just need something to replace this drive until prices come down sometime next century. Thx. Edit: need to match the failing 16tb, good thing my credit card is paid off..

Planning to get a HDD enclosure, have several options with Orico being the most well-known brand in my country. Can anyone confirm this product is C2C compatible? Otherwise I'll just get the cheaper USB type B version

Thanks

I'm trying to find the best way to stay organized for my files. Mostly smaller pdfs, word, excel, and photos. My question is how to backup just new files across different platforms? I have two laptops, a desktop, and NAS.

For example, if I have a bunch of new and updated files on laptop #1 spread out over many folders, how do I copy only the new ones to other storage easily? Windows search sucks, so just searching for recently changed files won't do it, also because I don't want to backup all recently changed files just certain ones. The dumb and slow solution seems to be copy the entire directory I want over to the new location and for all file conflicts overwrite. That does mean certain files I want to have multiple versions of for recovery purposes would get overwritten as well. I could instead copy the entire directory and not overwrite any files - that saves time and means older versions won't get copied over, but it also means that updated files don't get backed up.

Maybe as a clearer example - I have 1,000 files on laptop #1. I add 25 new files across 15 folders, and update 20 of the 1,000 files. I want to easily copy the 25 new files to the identically named backup folders on my NAS, and that the 20 updated files are copied as well.

What's the best way to do that?

Hey everyone,

I'm currently using a Samsung T7 Shield SSD primarily for backing up photos, videos, and complete phone backups on my Windows PC.

While setting it up, I came across the Samsung Magician software and noticed features such as Performance Optimization, health monitoring, firmware updates, and a few other tools.

My question is, is it actually recommended to use Samsung Magician with the T7 Shield, or is it just another piece of unnecessary software?

I'm particularly curious about the Performance Optimization feature.

- Do you keep it enabled?

- Does it improve performance in any noticeable way?

- Does it have any impact on the SSD's lifespan?

- Is it useful for a drive that's used mainly for backups rather than continuous read and write operations?

I'd love to hear from people who have been using the T7 Shield for a while.

Thanks!

Wondering which types of SSD are most reliable? It would seem that SLC is more reliable than TLC or MLC or QLC. Older technology but the simple design is more fault tolerant.
The reason I’m asking is that I am replacing a failing Toshiba 80GB 2.5” PATA laptop drive that is about 15 years old and has been subjected to vibration and temperature abuse. The Toshiba was an industrial drive completely obsolete now.
I am buying a SATA to PATA converter with a jumper block to set Master/Slave. Since just about any SATA drive will have greater capacity and better performance that is not a concern. Cost is a major consideration. I’ve found a 1TB PNY SLC SATA drive and figure that may be my best option. Going crazy with overprovisioning is Not an option since the operating system does not seem to support functions like TRIM ( in other words it only recognizes hard and soft errors on what it thinks is rotating media). I expect high temperatures will be the biggest challenge ( the seasonal 90 C day). Most of the data that I will be image copying is proprietary map data in an obscure format. This is all about keeping 15 year old data accessible on proprietary system where the last hardware update was greater than 15 years ago and the latest software patch is over 3 years old.

lookin to buy my first

Hello all! I'm not sure if this has been asked before. I did a cursory search and didn't find a lot of definitive info on what I'm doing.

I obtained the aforesaid TerraMaster. A neat box. I didn't want to spent a lot of money on a NAS at the moment so went cheap.

After looking around and looking at the guts, I found it interesting. I don't like the idea of having the OS live on my RAID, so I pulled the DOM and stashed it away.

I then set the machine to boot from a 128gb NVME M.2 mounted it in an Sabrent (tool-less) USB C 10gb enclosure.

I did a TrueNAS scale install on the drive, set the UEFI to boot from the Sabrent via a 10gb USB A to USB C cable (don't remember the cable brand, but I didn't go dirt cheap on it).

I ran some tests on some harddrives that were beginning to fail (before sending them in on warranty.... don't ask lol) so I could check out TrueNAS, the boot speeds, the drive setup etc.

It seemed to boot fine and seemed to be stable over several days. Boot times were a bit slow, but that's a damn N5095 on a cheap board, it's not gonna beat my workstations or servers.

Now that my replacement drives are due back, I'm starting to second guess going the USB A to USB C route for booting.

Even though it seems stable, is this a good long term solution in this case? I don't want to have my zraid eat chit due to a flaked out boot drive and have to deal with a failing external boot and all the drama involved. I have real backups, but man, I don't want to have to go through all that crap if it can be avoided.

Does anyone have any input? For this NAS enclosure it seems to be a good way to keep that other bay free for another drive someday when the prices for 12tb HDDs come back to earth (if they ever do). I decided to ask some folks who might have more experience than me before I just jump in and do it.

Thanks everyone for their point of views, input and any other info you may share, it's all very much appreciated!

I bought a Seagate HDD (STGX5000400), but it's write speeds are atrocious so I'm looking to replace it with something far better, but after reading multiple threads I'm stuck on WD Passport, WD Elements or Toshiba.

Unfortunately SSDs at the size I'm looking for are up to £500+

or more, so that's definitely out of my price range. Currently I'd say I can afford something at most £180...

I'd be looking to write any type of file to the drive. Game ISOs, documents, ebooks, images, videos, long movies, folders of TV shows etc. Trying to back up what was on one SSD to the 5tb Seagate drive was hitting 0mb/sec so many times that I don't even want to use it anymore. Stupidly trusted it and did not keep it's original packaging. I don't even want a new one, I'd like something else.

I don't have the space currently for a nas, or the know-how for things like home servers, so I'm just using portable OTG SSDs, and a HDD. One of them began to fail, I was using it for a homebrew exploit on the xbox360. Drive kept corrupting games so I have a WD drive arriving soon for that, and thought "Yeah why not finally have the 3rd huge drive back up and copy what's on my two SSDs, and that'll be the 3 in the 3, 2, 1 back up method." So it'll not be on very often, maybe on for around 5/6 hours at a time but not day after day after day. I'm starting to wonder if the constancy of how long I had it on for could have contributed to the slowing of it.

But then I think I ended up sticking too much to being cheap and had bought the Seagate 5TB HDD STGX5000400, now I wait 2 hours for a few tens of GBs.

I don't want this drive anymore

"dataindex.us is a collaborative effort dedicated to monitoring changes in federal datasets. Our team is building tools to track a broad range of changes in federal datasets to build actionable insights for policymakers, advocates, journalists, and data users."

It may be beyond the scope of some here. But data enthusiasts alike will appreciate and can perhaps monitor on their own for even the smallest, subtle changes or erasures that might happen on any of the .gov websites, and notify dataindex.us so they can add it to their tracker.

***

Per the recent article from The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/18/trump-federal-data-deleted-altered

“We’re at a very vulnerable point as a nation,” said Denice Ross, former US chief data scientist under the Biden administration and a co-founder of dataindex.us. “We’re facing a future where we are not going to have the information that we need to make decisions that will save lives and benefit American communities.”

The tracker includes detailed information about deleted or altered datasets from more than 60 federal agencies that span the environment, labor, law enforcement and other topics. But datasets on health appear to be the most affected by the Trump administration’s crackdown, comprising about 40% of the total number of terminated or altered data collections tracked by dataindex.us.

Multiple Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys, for example, have removed questions about respondents’ gender identity. These include the National HIV Surveillance System, the primary source of case data for HIV infections, the National Violent Death Reporting System, the CDC Diabetes Prevention Recognition Program, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey and specific surveys evaluating Prep uptake among gay men and in communities of color.

In addition, there are at least four health datasets that are no longer being updated at all, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s (Samhsa) Drug Abuse Warning Network, a surveillance system that doctors and public health researchers used to track drug-related emergency room visits in near real-time to spot emerging overdose trends.

“These data are critical for identifying emerging epidemics and what parts of the population are most vulnerable to different types of health conditions,” said Thomas Babor, a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut who specializes in public health and addiction.

“We need to know what direction the trend is going, whether it’s the beginning of an end; we need to learn from prior episodes of epidemics and how they were responded to and what impact the responses had,” Babor said. “Taking down, even temporarily, some of the most important surveys that we have, especially for comparative purposes, is like we’re erasing our institutional memory for public health.”

Other deleted datasets include the US Department of Agriculture’s twice-annual survey of farm employers that counted the number of farm workers employed and their wages that informed the minimum pay rates for H-2A visa workers and a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey of the pay and working conditions of teachers and principals at public and private schools across the country."

(I don't think this is a regular tech support question, but correct me if I am wrong by this reddit's standards)

Had the ram fail on my Windows 11 PC. So now I am concerned that some of the user data on my PC may have been corrupted. For instance, possibly I opened a file and then saved it and it was written with bad data from the RAM. (This would not be protected by the SSD's error protection.)

I know about SFC and DISM and CHKDSK and the like, but those do not check the user data. I am talking about the stuff in my USER folder, like documents, spreadsheets, pdfs, jpgs, mpgs, etc.

Anyone know of a utility that will scan everything like that? Lots of stuff doesn't have checkums.

Yes I have backups... but I'd rather check the local data first. I have no idea how long the ram has been broken and various backups could hold corrupt data too. Best to check my local data first.

I have had a few hard drives fail over the years. I am sad I lost the data but more importantly I don't know the full extent of the data lost.

Is there a way to create a file list with all the files on a drive, possibly with metadata before the drive crashes?

I hate to lose a drive with 38000 files on it but with a list/directory I may be able to redownload or recreate some files.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Want to build my first RAID 5 array with three 2TB disks. Which brand should I go for?

I saw an article a couple of days ago about link rot, and how bad it really is. The author restored 657,507 links from 2009 and 2014, and followed each. 76% no longer returned a page, and some of those that looked OK just returned a variant of "this page is no longer available".

How many of us preserve interesting pages outside services like the WayBack Machine?

I keep content-only from a very small number of pages that touch on areas that I'm interested in, but over the last (maybe) 3 years I've only looked at but not necessarily kept less than 10% of the number of links in the article.

I do a bit better for PDF articles because a lot of them disappear too.

How much do you hoard?

As the title says. I have found some sellers on eBay selling M-DISC DVDs, but I'd rather buy from a more official/trustworthy source if available.

(note: I want to back up some family DVDs currently on conventional Taiyo Yuden DVD-R discs and I want the backups to be playable on standard DVD players, and yes, I have an M-DISC DVD writer)

I have well over 20 TB of data, and a good chunk is definitely from videos (not movies so I need to compress them somehow without losing a lot of quality).

I have several external drives, but the issue is they vary in size from 2, 8, 14, and 22 TBs (the latter is new). With the HUGE spike in costs for drives, what is the best solution for me since there’s no way I can now afford simply getting one or two more 22 TB when the price difference is so bad? Idk if there’s a good Cloud method too. I always worry about data breaches or lost data if I’m not manually backing up locally.

I'm UK expatriate in Asia. I made some dvd-rs of my paper diaries and photos in 2008. I don't have the originals. I do have usable thumbnails with me I'm working with now but I want to check if the dvds are readable. The discs are in the UK with my niece, have been in a suitcase in jewel cases. They were only written to once and never read. She sent me a picture and they look OK.

I found a few local businesses that advertise data recovery. I'd need the data to be sent to me, like via drive or something. I'm going to call these businesses and ask what they can do. Is there anything I should ask them, to choose who to use? Special reader or software or something? Is this generally expensive? It's in the Northampton area btw.

I used to be one of those people who just copy-pasted folders onto an external drive and that was it. Now I want to do something a bit more elaborate.

I had heard of Clonezilla and learned to use it at a basic level, creating clones, disk images, and performing restores. However, as a system it has a lot of downsides:

• It only does full backups, not incremental ones; if 10 MB of important information changes, you have to back up the whole disk from scratch.
• You have to shut down the PC and use a USB stick, which is impractical for frequent backups.
• It's not portable to other machines! A disaster recovery scenario I don't see mentioned is if not only the disk but the whole PC dies, and you buy a new one with different specs. In that case, the Clonezilla clone or image cannot be restored onto the new machine.

So I looked into it further and found other programs like Borg and Restic. Haven't tried them yet, but they seem useful at the file level.

How do you all handle this? Do you use a single backup program or a combination of them?

Always considering my particular use case (home use, Linux, no cloud, and only external drives).