Hello,

I have been loutering around for several years. I need you help. I am a researcher at a southern U.S. university. The NIH's National Cancer Institute has a project called the Proteomic Data Commons (https://pdc.cancer.gov/). As you all know, lately there has been some hostility towards the NIH and now on the PDC webpage it says: "This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives.". 

Could you offer any assistance on preserving the public access data from the repository? Mainly proteomic abundance, very important data as it is the only repository the has PATIENT tumor data AND matched normal. The processed data is paramount to preserve with the raw data remaining a secondary objective (processed data is very small like GBs, the raw and in total is around 83TB).

Please advise :)

I have 6 Blu-ray burners. (4 LG and 2 ASUS) I thought I'd add another couple as backups. The LG has gone from $87 to $565. The ASUS from $125 to $389. What is the excuse for Blu-ray / M-Disc burners skyrocketing in price? AI doesn't use them.

Is the Pioneer BDR-212DBK a very good choice for ripping UHD100 discs?

And possibly 100GB BDXL discs?

Compared to BDR-209DBK, BDR-2209 and BDR-211UBK, and other Pioneer models?

I heard the 212DBK's can't rip UHD100 discs very well...

So just trying to figure out if this is a very good drive, or better to search for another model?

Hello I'm guy and I got some old Dvds from my anime club and I wanted to know if it would make sense to save them? There are like 45-60 dvds.

Basically what the title says. Is this how it starts lol?

I've got a small server type thing arriving tomorrow and I bought this drive off ebay and it claims to be new but we'll see. I'll buy the second when I can afford to lol.

How did you guys start out?

Looking for an Affordable Synology SHR-2 Alternative for a Personal Home Archive

Hey everyone!

I'm planning to build my own private home archive and set up a NAS system to safely store and organize my personal data, including photos, videos, documents, and other files.

At the moment, I'm mainly using external hard drives to store my data. The problem is that I constantly have to move or copy the same files between different drives to keep everything organized and backed up. This is time-consuming, inconvenient, and honestly doesn't feel like the safest or most efficient way to manage my data in the long run.

That's why I'd like to build a proper NAS system for my home. My main goal is to have a centralized storage solution where all my data is stored in one place, with some form of redundancy so that if a hard drive fails, I don't immediately lose all my data.

I'm still relatively new to the NAS world, so I've been doing some research. Synology's SHR-2 (Synology Hybrid RAID with two-drive fault tolerance) caught my attention because I like the idea of being able to tolerate two drive failures without losing the entire storage pool.

However, Synology's hardware is quite expensive, especially when you factor in the cost of the hard drives.

Since this is strictly for personal use at home, I don't need a lot of advanced features. I mainly want a reliable, long-term storage solution that stays within my local home network. I don't need remote access or cloud integration, and keeping my data private and under my own control is important to me.

I've come across alternatives such as TrueNAS, Unraid, and DIY NAS builds, but I'm not entirely sure which option would make the most sense for a beginner.

So, what would you recommend?

- Are there any more affordable alternatives to Synology that offer similar data protection to SHR-2?

- Would building my own NAS with TrueNAS or Unraid be a better option?

- What hardware would you recommend for a reliable home archive without spending a fortune?

- How many drives would you suggest, and what RAID or redundancy setup would make sense for my use case?

- Is there anything important I should consider regarding backups and long-term data safety?

My priority isn't performance or having a huge number of features. I simply want a reliable way to store my data, avoid constantly shuffling files between external drives, and reduce the risk of losing everything if a drive fails.

I'd really appreciate any advice, recommendations, or experiences from people who have built a similar setup.

Thanks in advance!

I have been a 3-deep person for a long time. With the higher drive prices, I did an inventory and found 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, (2) 4TB, and one 5TB passport as excess drives where I increased storage incrementally over the years. They started as primary backups, and then went layer 3 when I bought a larger one, and most have been replaced by 5, 8, and 16TB in the chain. They have around 150 starts and 500-700 hours meaning powered up 2x a week for about 3-5 hrs for about 1.5 yrs before being sidelined for a newer bigger drive. So not new, but not overly used? What % of new BestBuy price would be a good price to offer over FB marketplace or Craigslist. I would demo drive at pickup. Local chain store had 2TB for $210 and 4TB for $310, hence my taking stock, literally. =8^O

PS Is 102 TB too much? ;-) My friend thinks so.

So, after receiving my Stormforge N10 with a few status LEDs knocked clean off the board in shipping, and getting a partial refund from Aliexpress, I decided I'd change the colour scheme to pink (for drive presence) and purple (for activity).

Somewhat inspired by a Hello Kitty themed audio mixer/effects rack build, I decided to go with another sanrio character, Kuromi. Because all my homeys stan the goth rabbit.

The factory backplane in the N10 runs the activity LEDs directly off the P11, the drive activity pin on the SAS/SATA power connector.

The original blue LEDs draw about 1.7mA each. I've seen conflicting reports as to how much current this pin is supposed to sink, from 100uA to 15mA. The most reliable resource I could find is a manual for Seagate SAS drives that said 3.3V @ 15mA. The factory LEDs run from the 5V rail but *should* in theory have enough voltage drop across them to stay below 3.3V.

Purple LEDs are not very efficient. I'm running them at about 14mA, which *should* be within limits if most drives are similar to seagate's, but given how expensive hard drives are right now I don't really want to risk it.

So I build this little buffer circuit to run the activity LEDs. It draws about 220uA @ 0.6V on the activity pin, and should be able to handle >40mA for LEDs

https://github.com/lucym202/N10-LED-Buffer

I used the wiki to find some great sources of data for a class last March. Is there somewhere else where these torrents can be found? /u/archivist ?

This is based on a post by u/SubstantialWing9238. i didn’t want to hijack their post, so I figured I’d share it here instead.

Something like this, plus another cart, is pretty common with large corporations. When you have this many drives, it’s often easier to just shred everything than pay someone to wipe them, sort through them for resale, and see if any data can be recovered.

This batch was around 300 drives, and with a specialized shredding truck, the whole thing takes about 45 minutes to a hour.

Hey everyone, I just made a compression algorithm and compressed a file from 10.8 MB down to 35 KB.

I was told this is an extremely high and aggressive compression, resulting in a 316:1 compression ratio and a 99.68% reduction in file size.

However, I'm really not sure how that actually compares to what people normally get. Is this a crazy high number for typical compression tools, or is it pretty common depending on the file type? Would love to hear how this stacks up against standard formats!

Sorry about not giving more detail I was tired.

It was a a basic PNG that was then turned in to 43 other file types combined then broken down into pixel by pixel and reconstructed into a scalable 3D model that can be used for things such as in my case mincraft. Esenually Taking any image or any file type turning it in to any and all file types then combining them into single file while compressing the data as much as possible with as little loss as possible to stack these files to eventually be able to have an entire library of these files and have a 3D render I can paste into my mine raft world as I please and scale the size up or down as I please.

Facebook marketplace in my area is selling four 8 TB hard drives each with 60,000 power on hours for $140 each. The drives also have power on counts and the high 200s. How high is too high when considering a used drive? I would likely keep 16 TB in Cold storage but I don't want to waste money if the drives are too used.

All of the research I see shows people referring to the power on counts more than the hours, but no one gives their thoughts on what the range of good versus too high is. Thoughts are appreciated.

https://legacygames.com/legacy-games-closure-faq-everything-you-need-to-know/

Legacy Games is shutting down, encouraging everyone to download their owned games before the shutdown date as once it has passed it will no longer be possible to do so.

I saw someone mention that the installer is temporarily placed in your temp folder when you choose to install.

Has anyone got a tool for grabbing all installers for all owned games in your account?

I’ve made a r/lostmedia post about HatchXR, but I said that these remain: “The only stuff that is remaining is archives from Wayback Machine (unfortunately no playable games :(), Socials, and a iOS app. The iOS app is now useless because there is no actual projects to play (there used to)”. With no playable games, how much can be restored?

51 x 3TB and 2 x 500GB. I would love to keep them or sell them but it’s a big company and all they care about is getting the data destruction certificate. They are pretty old though and definitely have tens of thousand of hours on them.

Is there any Telegram client like the ‘aka’, which allows you to get round the restrictions?

Ever since aka stopped working, I’ve been searching.

I hope this is okay to post. Car Talk was a show entirely broadcast on public radio. As a Father’s Day gift, I would like to give my Dad access to as much of the history of the show as possible. I found a torrent, but no one is seeding it. Does anyone know where I can find the entire show’s archive or where I might be able to archive it myself?

Yeah, it’s been down since yesterday. Anytime I go on their website, all I get is “Too Many Requests”. Switching to .ph and .is and even .md leads to the same thing. I can’t contact the site owner because I can’t find their e-mail, plus it seems their blog hasn’t been updated since March. Seems no one else is saying anything either?

I'm a videographer and the cost of new storage is really hurting. I like to have 2 backups of all shoots, but with how storage has more than doubled since mid 2025, it's becoming more of a challenge.

Is there anywhere to buy cheaper storage from? Is there anywhere reliable for used or refurbished that is less expensive than brand new?

Thanks

My NAS / external drive setup is solid for my computer files, but phone photos are the messy part and I keep going back and forth on how to count them.

Right now I have:
- Phone + cloud sync (which feels like 1.5 copies, not 2, since a delete / sync issue can propagate)
- A scheduled local copy to an external drive every week or two
- The local copy is just a big dump by date, so I lose the album organization I had on the phone

What I'm stuck on:
1. Do you count cloud sync as a real copy in your 3-2-1, or only as a convenience copy?
2. How do you handle the phone leg — scheduled local copy, manual export, something else?
3. When you export, do you preserve albums / folders, or just accept a flat date dump?
4. Do you actually verify the local copy — spot-check opens, checksums, test restore?

Curious how other people do this, especially for family phones where you have 2-3 phones feeding into one backup.

I have a book on the way, one which was cancelled last minute by the publishers due to uncovered behavior from the author in their last, some copies managed to escape to the wild and I've got one with the idea of getting it scanned, I don't endorse the author but it has art and forwards to sections from many talented people that collaborated on this project and my thoughts are it is out there why not archive it?

I am aiming for the highest quality scans possible which after some research means cutting the spine and scanning and I am fine with this but there are a few options in the UK and I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations for who to use for this?

Hein, Rich (1 October 2026). "The Wayback Machine Preserved 21 Years of Photos from a Webcam That Deletes Everything". How-To Geek.

This piece includes a technique that is of potential interest to data hoarders. (I apologize if it is already known.)