As I may have alluded to previously, this is the time of year when I routinely curate the past year's data/files. This process almost always includes applying the same process to the previous years' data/files.
This year's solution to my curation issues is/was "cold block storage". I have been playing with Digital Ocean's implementation. So far I have only uploaded 400 GB of data, and the estimated costs will be about a $1/month Wow!? In the end though, I may have about 4TB of data, and to some degree, I will want to access/churn it, which is not amenable to cold storage. What's more, when it comes to cold cloud storage, I do not really own my own data/files because they are "over there".
I am now very serousluy considering NAS -- network-accessible storage. A NAS is essentically an appliance. It is a set of hard drives literally wrapped in hardware with proproetary operating system used to do I/O, provide access control, implement file transfer protocols, and to some degree, analyze the saved data. I could build my own, but then there is the convenience factor.
In the end, I think I will buy a UGreen DH2300 and two 4TB drives for a total cost of about $400. This ought to be plenty of storage space and allow me to own my own data. I will probably continue to put stuff into cold storage, just in case.
Do you have experience with NAS? Seems like a very good idea for library archivists.
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Eric Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu>
Received on Fri Jan 23 2026 - 11:35:53 EST