Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right community for my question, but as my daily driver is Linux, it feels somewhat relevant.

I have a lot of data on my backup drives, and recently added 50GB to my already 300GB of storage (I can already hear the comments about how low/high/boring that is). It's mostly family pictures, videos, and documents since 2004, much of which has already been compressed using self-made bash scripts (so it’s Linux-related ^^).

I have a lot of data that I don’t need regular access to and won’t be changing anymore. I'm looking for a way to archive it securely, separate from my backup but still safe.

My initial thought was to burn it onto DVDs, but that's quite outdated and DVDs don't hold much data. Blu-ray discs can store more, but I'm unsure about their longevity. Is there a better option? I'm looking for something immutable, safe, easy to use, and that will stand the test of time.

I read about data crystals, but they seem to be still in the research phase and not available for consumers. What about using old hard drives? Don’t they need to be powered on every few months/years to maintain the magnetic charges?

What do you think? How do you archive data that won’t change and doesn’t need to be very accessible?

Cheers

Maybe you know the feeling of still being undecided and fully committed to buy new gear. For some time now this is me with the m8. Buying just new gear is not my thing actually. It took me 4 years to buy an op-z and I am absolutely happy with it. It took me a while though to figure out why. Because I make music mostly in reaper. But the op-z is just so beautifully transportable. But it does have some drawbacks, if one wants to make music on the way, it's great, producing the whole song, not so much - you probably know the term dawless. Well, I was looking for "it". Tried the polyend tracker/+ and I like the tracker mechanism, but the polyend is just not as portable as one wishes for. Now I am trying myself on a headless m8 and it's nice. Definitely my go to, IF it would be purchasable in Thomann... I am just scared of the import taxes from USA to EU. Anyone here ordered one to the EU and can tell about any taxes?

Anyway, thanks for moderating this small community.

---------- update Well I was one of the lucky ones, who could get their hands on the preorder button fast enough. So in 2 months time I should have my m8 :D

Hi, just recently it's foss had an article about homelabs. Of course I digged in, since there is a small nuc working tirelessly in the corner of my routers closet. So far it just crawls some web pages for me and sends emails accordingly to my filters. So I hoped to find new exciting stuff to let it crunch through. The articles content did not spark my interest though.

Well, I'd like to know what you are using on your homelab. In hope you'll do something I'd like to follow. Cheers

Thank you all for your recommendations. You are awesome. I really need to go through it one by one.

To make it easier for myself, this is a small summary of all your recommendations. Thanks again.

Virtualization and Infrastructure:

• Proxmox VE - Virtualization platform
• NGINX Proxy Manager - Reverse proxy manager
• Tailscale - Secure network access
• apt cacher NG - Package caching tool
• neko - Virtualized browser for secure browsing

Monitoring and Notification:

• Uptime Kuma - System monitoring tool
• Netdata - Real-time monitoring
• Zabbix - Enterprise monitoring solution
• Ntfy - Notification tool

Media Serving and Management:

• AudioBookShelf - Audio book management
• Jellyfin - Media server
• Syncthing - File synchronization
• Calibre-Web - Ebook management
• Spotweb - Usenet indexing
• Plex - Media player
• Komga - Comics and eBooks

File Sharing and Collaboration:

• Syncthing - File synchronization
• Gitea - Git hosting platform
• Sharry - Secure file sharing
• Vaultwarden - Password manager
• Stash - Data repository
• Baserow - Database management
• wiki.js - Wiki platform
• Wordpress - Content management system

Development and Version Control:

• BOINC - Distributed computing
• Forgejo - Git repository
• Gitea - Git hosting platform
• Development environment LXCs with VS Code

Networking and Communication:

• Traefik - Reverse proxy
• Portainer - Container management
• Matrix (dendrite) server - Chat server
• Navidrome - Music server
• Joplin server - Note-taking server
• RSS-Bridge - RSS feed aggregator
• SearXNG - Metasearch engine
• Dashy - Homepage for services

Miscellaneous:

• ActualBudget - Budget management
• SabNZBd - Usenet downloader
• Traccar - GPS tracking
• Restic server - Backup tool
• dump1090 + fr24feed + pfclient + piaware + rbfeeder + adsbexchange - ADS-B data tools
• Stirling-PDF - PDF management
• Miniflux - RSS feed reader
• Pihole - Network-wide ad blocker
• Huginn - Automation tool
• LimeSurvey - Survey software
• Omada controller - Network management for TP-Link devices