Comparing to prices 20 years ago is not a valid point. Sure, I paid $400USD for a 500GB HDD 20 years ago, and $200 for a 5GB in 1999. So what? You can't compare computer parts to oranges. The latter is the same product with the impact of inflation, and the former is a massively faster/larger/better product that consistently used to cost about the same as the previous generation. That's all changed in the last 2 years. I'd say that prices doubling for the same 8TB drive from 2023 qualifies as crazy expensive. Back on topic -- a consumer-grade external 2.5" drive isn't really much of a backup (it's basic storage expansion), and regardless, onsite backup is not a backup. A fire, flood, burglary or angry wife could mean that you've lost everything. If you prefer the onsite route -- for the most basic RAID1 array, you need 2 disks and a NAS device/Pi/something. 8TB Ironwolf disks are currently $450USD per. And that RAID1 array nets you 50% capacity, so that's 8TBof storage with 2x8TB drives installed. Not even close to enough for me, but might work for OP, but that's still >$1000USD and comes with a learning curve and maintenance requirements. For a real onsite backup, you need a proper RAID5 (3 disk minimum) or RAID6 array (4 disk minimum). Start adding $300-$400USD for the device on top of the pricy hard disks. And you still need REAL backup, which is offsite. I've done this at the corporate level as far back as tape libraries, right through dedicated onsite appliances (with cloud sync), and not into pure Azure/AWS blob storage. And like I said -- your average home user is best served by a basic cloud backup subscription. Including me.
