this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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[–] eli@lemmy.world 21 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

This has been the biggest and dumbest take I've seen come from the GenZ/GenA crowd. Polaroids were a big hit a few years ago and I can't help but wince at this stuff. Yeah it's cute or whatever to hold it in your hand, but in 1, 5, 10, 30 years...when that photo or DVD is bent/scratched/lost, you'll be kicking yourself in the ass for even bothering with it.

Just pirate your content, take photos with your $1000 phones and print the photos out, and learn to backup your own shit. Buy a 2 bay NAS and backup your shit to it. And then backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.

My dad has been doing this since the early 2000s. We have our family photos AND videos from 1990-2026 all backed up on a NAS, which syncs to backblaze. ~600GBs of data. And the cloud backup on backblaze is $7.25 a month for that data.

Literally anyone can go buy a a $200 2-bay NAS, then grab two 1TB hard drives for $40 each. $280 for a NAS that will last you YEARS. And then figure out whatever service you want to backup to for a cloud backup.

[–] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

While I agree with the general idea, your example prices are no longer valid since storage costs are now through the roof. The best defense of kids using DVDs is that you can borrow them from the library for free.

[–] CatZoomies@lemmy.world 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.

Are you encrypting your data before it goes to Backblaze? And if so, are you also testing those encrypted backups?

[–] eli@lemmy.world 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, and yes. I'm running TrueNAS and I test a restore once a quarter or so, worst case once every 6 months.

I haven't had to do a full restore...so that'll be the true test, but I do have a sister TrueNAS at an off-site location for off-site backups. I went simple with this off-site one and just use Tailscale and Syncthing.

[–] Archr@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity how do you test your restore? Do you just choose a file and try to recover it from backup? I have a synology NAS that I should backup but haven't really looked into the complexities of backing it up.

[–] eli@lemmy.world 4 points 20 hours ago

I cut/paste a single file or folder, depending on my mood, out of a directory that is backed up and then do a PULL/sync through the TrueNAS GUI from Backblaze

Not sure on Synology...I'm sure there is a method though

[–] detren@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

There is a bit of a romantic feeling in only having a physical copy of a photo though, and Polaroids are the easiest ones to do this with.

[–] eli@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

And that's completely valid, but I just want to warn others that physical items deteriorate.

I'm currently digitally archiving photos of my great-great grandparents. You know how disappointing it is to have these photos, but then see they are all water damaged or torn or crumbled to all hell because of improper storage? Some scans are ok, others are terrible and will require work on my end to restore them digitally.

I'm sure we have thousands of digital photos of ourselves, but how many of those are backed up properly? How many of us will be regretting not backing things up properly and we can't share these photos with our grandkids or great grandkids or to reminisce because our phones died or Instagram shutdown or we stopped paying for iCloud?

All I'm saying is take your Polaroids, but also take plenty of digital photos and back them up as well.

[–] MycelialMass@lemmy.world 4 points 18 hours ago

Digital things degrade too, and faster than youd think

[–] BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world 0 points 16 hours ago

And drives can fail. And data can get corrupted. You could get a virus.

[–] PointyFluff@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago

easy with that logic, killer.