Best Hardware for Backups

[Brew01]

I have a limited data plan so cloud backup is not an option.
I would like to do a backup and store off site.
What is your recommended hardware, USB drive , SSD Drive, Sata Hard Drive.
It will probably be stored in a temp controlled area, but I would like the option
to be able to store the drive in any location.

[Jim Hauser]

For my offsite backups I use a standard HDD twice per month. I then store the drive in a safe deposit box at the bank.

My computer case makes it very easy to add and remove the drive internally. This also allows me complete control of the data. (I also have two copies of my backups on separate local drives.)

After Hurricane Katrina my computer system was completely ruined by incoming salt water (4 feet in my house) but the bank vault, and everything within it, suffered no ill effects.

The two hard drives that went underwater were salvaged and worked fine for a while but you never know.....

[English Invader]

I guess it depends on what you're backing up but I find the USB pens a very cheap and efficient method to store music files and other stuff that doesn't take up too much space. I also use good old CD/DVD-Rs and old computers I don't use so much anymore can come in handy in that regard. I tend to backup my stuff in lots of different places rather than just one.

[Tomgin5]

I typically do my backups of 128GB flash drives ($16) I also have a couple of 4 TB pocket drives for archives. I am not in a flood zone.

[Portreve]

This past Black Friday, I bought a Western Digital 4TB external HDD, reformatted it to GPT with an ext4 partition on it, and I migrated data from an older (ca. 2008) 1TB drive (and cleaned and massaged the data in the process).

What I would advise is to have redundancy to your data backup. I could use a cloud-based storage solution if I wanted to, but I prefer to keep exclusive hold of my personal data. That, however, just like with you, comes with the added chore of having to provide all services for yourself, one of those being redundancy.

NEVER, NEVER EVER have only one backup of your data. Always maintain at least two distinct copies.

I like the bank safe deposit box suggestion above. My suggestion would be, if you live in an earthquake-prone area, to keep a local copy and store the remote copy somewhere not affected by earthquakes (or, of course, floods).