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First core planner

Home Storage & Backup Planner

Use realistic assumptions to estimate the capacity, protection, copies, network, and equipment categories that fit your household or home-office data. Results are vendor-neutral and intended for planning, not a purchase order.

Your planning inputs

Example values are ready to calculate. Capacity uses decimal TB; operating systems may show a smaller TiB value.

Data and growth
TB

Files you want planned storage for today.

%

Use an estimate, not a best-case guess.

years

%

People and recovery scope

%

The share that needs planned backup versions.

Protection and copies

Separate target media, not another folder on the same array.

This describes availability after a drive failure. It does not replace independent backups.

Performance and budget
Mbps

How this recommendation works

Assumptions you can inspect and adjust

The planner grows your current decimal-TB data by the annual rate over the selected period, adds expansion headroom, then tests a same-size drive layout with the protection level you selected. Backup capacity is estimated separately from the important-data share, retention level, local copies, and optional offsite copy.

Transfer time assumes 75% of the entered upload speed. Cost is a broad planning range based on capacity class and equipment categories, not a live product quote. Mixed drive sizes, vendor-specific RAID behavior, data compression, and actual UPS runtime need separate confirmation before purchase.

How to use the result

  1. Adjust any assumption that feels optimistic or unclear.
  2. Use the configuration as a specification brief: bays, drive count, minimum drive size, protection, backup capacity, network tier, and UPS class.
  3. Confirm compatible layouts, drive recording method, power/runtime figures, and software support with the vendors you evaluate.
  4. Set a reminder to revisit the plan before available usable capacity falls below 20%.