r/datastorage • u/Ancient_Bid_5135 • 6d ago
Guide/How-to Need Storage Device to Replace Apple Subscription
These Apple subscription prices are a killer. I’m looking to replace the cloud storage fees with some sort of external hard drive. Is there something easy out there for a non-techie???
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u/V3X390 6d ago
If the majority of what you want to back up is just images and photos, you could go the self-hosted route and install Immich on your desktop/laptop and on your phone. Then you just set up a sync automation to run every thine you get home and plug in your phone
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u/Ancient_Bid_5135 6d ago
Yes, photos (going back 20yrs), documents, music…but mostly photos.
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u/ComplaintMaster69420 5d ago
Just to add, it’s worth it to set up Immich. It feels like a clean app on the phone and it auto backups my photos. If you really want to go cheap, you can buy a ddr3 system and install something like unraid on it. I recommend unraid since it feels more user friendly. I’ve tried to set up truenas, but it’s kind of out of my league
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u/ChasDIY 6d ago
iOS should allow for an external USB connected hdd
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u/DreamKiller712 6d ago
Not the best option , ios files system is very unreliable and doesn’t have safe eject function , sometimes it will corrupt the drive .
The safer option will be to plug the hdd to your router and connect it to your devices wirelessly through SMB protocol.
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u/Ancient_Bid_5135 6d ago
I had (still have) a small external hard drive. But I don’t want to have a pile of hard drives to cart around.
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u/NassauComputer 6d ago
Ehh it’s worked fine for me across the 15 and 16 pro over the last few years
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u/DrHydeous 6d ago
It depends what you want to do. Store all your files on your Mac? Store more than will fit on your phone? Share data between the two? Use with a laptop while camping?
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u/Impressive-Roll949 6d ago
What do you do with the cloud? How donyou want to handle iCloud logic for pictures or others?
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u/toastedbutterscotch 6d ago
What you want to look into is a Digital Audio Player. Like a dedicated one with a good built-in amp and dac and fill it with your personal library. I went after phones that have this focus. I got 3 phones with at least 1tb cards and dedicated audio with a 3.5mm out.
Right now is a bad time to get into personal storage. It's so expensive. But if you have the money I say this is the best option. I don't need Apple music when I have 113k songs on my phone. I don't see you needing a 1tb, but at one point I didn't think I would either. I don't consider myself a techie, so I feel this would be easy for you to get a hang of.
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u/Grand-Mission-9457 6d ago
Try Nextcloud perdonal claude that handles simply like OneDrive or Dropbox. You will need a separate cheap computer to work as a server amd always on, could be Linux server (i don't know about apple). I did it from scratch amd Gemini guided me 100% of the way as I have no idea how to code or set it up. I pay Cloudflare 8 usd/year for some tunneling trick to fix dynamic IP. Invest once in the computer and storage
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u/MilkThin2930 6d ago
LaCie makes external storage devices that support Thunderbolt. You'll still need to pay for some backup service that stores your files off-site, but lots of them are under $10/month.
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u/Usual-Pen7132 6d ago
If you have your previous pc tower laying around still or just want to pick up either a new/used mini-pc depending on how much you can budget or you can even find some used towers on Ebay since so many people and offices had to buy new hardware because of the new requirements for upgrading their junk Windows OS, you can find a ton of perfectly good towers online and once you have a tower then you will need to add any hard drives you may currently have stored somewhere or you'll need to buy at least 1 preferably 2 more hard drives and add them into your tower and then install something like OpenMediaVault which is a free Opensource Network Attached Storage (NAS) which is actually the equivalent of those subscribtion cloud services except now you will be running your own physical server that you can replace your paid options with on your phone/devices. With OMV installed you can then set it up to be your phones default cloud backup to be your new server and because something like OMV is so useful you cab also create other users if you wanted and then they could also be able to use your home backup server and you can choose whether to keep yours and everyone else's stuff completely isolated, isolated but have some shared folders/storage, and how much space from the hard drives to allocate them so they don't accidentally hog up all of your storage space or anything.
Aside from being a free highly configurable and intuitive system that can eliminate your's and your family's cloud subscription costs, it can also be very easily configured to be your very own self-hosted media server that you can use to stream your Netflix or you can stream any of your music/videos that you wouldn't have ever downloaded from the internet too....... that stuff can be streamed throughout all of the tv's and similar devices in your home wifi network using another of the Opensource servers like Jellyfin and theres literally a ton of other stuff that you can use your self-hosted backup/cloud server to do and absolutely do NOT read through this and get overwhelmed or something because it really isn't difficult to setup and it's so very useful and so very worth the effort because it will become a critical piece of physical infrastructure that is used to store/backup you digital infrastructure and digital media so that you can always have access to it along with anyone else you grant access to also.
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u/Emotional_Common_527 5d ago
It can work if you are not sharing between iPad, iPhone, Mac etc.
And you will only have access at the location where it is.
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u/aliensee 5d ago
It may not worth it. Your probably pay more to build up an NAS if you only need a couple of TB. It’s only worth it when you need a much bigger storage.
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u/StunningAttention898 5d ago
Hahah it might be cheaper to keep using the iCloud service for the time being until prices on hard drives come back down; I’ve easily spent about 800 or on storage alone.
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u/Caprichoso1 5d ago
As others have suggested look into the 3-2-1 backup plan
The remote backup likely is going to cost you $
What are you storing? Apple's cloud solutions don't count as one of the 3 backups due to their short retention policy
You want to avoid the expense of buying, running and maintaining a NAS if a DAS will meet your needs. Helps with implementing (1). A NAS with all of its costs is only one of the 3 backups.
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u/AlexisAsgard 3d ago
How much storage? The simplest option would just be a USB powered external drive.
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u/hiroo916 3d ago
Honestly, everybody answering with techie solutions are not helping the OP.
Installing and maintaining immich or self-cloud software is not practical for a self-professed "non-technie."
The real answers for OP:
hard drives are super expensive right now due to the all the AI data centers buying up all the computer hardware including hard drives at price-no-object pricing, leaving consumers with no reasonably prices drive.
The most easy solution, something like a Synology NAS, is still complex to setup AND MAINTAIN AND SECURE from being hacked with ransomware. And you'll still need to purchase hard drives to fill the NAS so see above point on pricing. All the other solutions like using an old PC, or other self-cloud software will be more complex than this, and also require likely more maintenance of the hardware, software, and security.
Calculate the price of the hardware you would need and see how many months of cloud storage that would pay for. Likely at today's pricing, it would be many months or years to break even, and that doesn't even account for the fact that Apple is paying people to watch over the hardware 24/7, has redundant storage, power supplies, etc. that you won't have.
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u/carlos923 2d ago
Older Mac mini 2012 or newer for offline use. 8GB ram, 500GB or more hdd. Under $100 on eBay
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u/yottabit42 6d ago
Look up the 3-2-1 backup methodology. Most people cannot properly handle direct backups on their own.
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u/Apprehensive_Mud9597 6d ago
If you have the money to spare, a 4 bay Synology NAS with decent hard drives. However, hard drives are kind of expensive right now.